Plant · P-321

Perennial Kale

Brassica oleracea var ramosa

Perennial kale is a standing shrub-sized brassica grown for two harvests off one plant - the cabbage-flavored leaves, best picked young, and the flowering shoots, eaten like sprouting broccoli before they open. It's cold-hardy to well below freezing, but heat is what actually limits it, so in a hot-summer climate it behaves as a cool-season cropper: it survives the summer rather than producing through it, then feeds you again from fall into late spring without ever needing resowing. It's propagated from cuttings and rarely sets viable seed, so once established it stays exactly where it's planted.