How to Grow Kale Organically without Pests and Disease

hey nerds Farber Jesse here in today's video I figured it's about time we gave kale its flowers actually that one could be literal I'll give you the full rundown on growing kale Pest and disease management harvesting and storing and a little about what the research says because well honestly these videos are kind of just an excuse for me to geek out on research papers so let's do it the amazing thing about kale is that even 15 or so years ago the thought of doing a detailed production video on Kale would have been somewhat hilarious at least here in America where kale was largely a buffet garnish but the health benefits of kale won over consumers as kale is loaded with all sorts of phytonutrients antioxidants fiber puns all that stuff so the demand for kale grew and with that demand came more interest in how to grow this crop without the pests and in a way that actually makes money or at least if you're a backyard grower actually makes kale so today we'll go through through all of the different pieces and parts to getting kale successfully to harvest uh I'm not going to discuss baby kale today I'll leave that for a baby greens video for next year so make sure you are subscribed today it's all about the leaf kale starting with varieties uh according to studies there is a pretty significant difference in terms of nutrients and biomass uh that is yield between kale varieties and there's no easy way to tell you which kales will work best in your situation one study compared 36 kale varieties grown organically to determine adaptability biomass and nutrients the study found that cultivars uh westlander curly Roa and Scarlet were best adapted for fall production for biomass and mineral concentrations so you can go off that if You' like for a starting point and like with all of these videos the citations will be in the show notes um for me what I've found really works well in the fall is West Lance winter boar red boar and tusken kale uh while red and white russian along withn win bore are also my go-to spring varieties um there are certainly others and I hope you will list your favorites in the comment section however I should say that I have not tested any of the ones that I just listed for nutrient content or anything like that um with anything other than a good pasta dish or a hash or a salad which are not notably super scientific measurements but as they say the nose nose I'm sure somebody says that I mean somebody that understands that the old factory system is actually how we taste food more than the tongue it's going to be hard to say if those are the varieties that will work best for you in your Growing System soil region or pasta uh if you're new to Growing kale try a few different varieties to see what works best and if you're an old hat at it um try a few new varieties too because you may not know what you're missing plant breeding just continues to improve so yeah anyway kale seeds can be started in trays or directly seated into the ground uh though unless it's a baby crop starting kale and trays or soil blocks is going to be the most sensible thing um to guarantee you maximize your space um and get good germination this is true of many if not most vegetables directly seeding something into the ground can be less labor intensive but you can also wind up with large gaps between plants or conversely too thick of stand of plants or weeds which all of those things can harm the quality and quantity of your Harvest direct seeding is also slow not in terms of labor but in terms of production we are often starting plants in the greenhouse for the simple fact that we can give a crop several weeks of a head start before it ever goes into the ground so like in the summer we can get a whole other crop like a round of Say lettuce before the kale or for to use a different crop example radishes before zucchini or whatever um anyway we can get an entire other crop in and out of a bed all the while the kale or whatever transplant we're growing is quietly maturing in the greenhouse usually quietly as opposed to taking up space in the garden um sometimes we'll just interplant the crop right into the proceeding crop that's coming out called intercropping or relay cropping uh we've done a lot of videos on that so check those out or check out the living soil handbook where I dedicate a lot of time to practical inter planning strategies um get that from us at no till grow.com and it helps to sustain and support these videos it's awesome all right so no matter how you choose to start your seeds and no matter what varieties you choose the conditions for germination will largely be the same they can germinate any where from 55 to 85° F which is 12.5 to 26° C if that's a thing but kale prefers that 65° to 70° fhe or 18 to 21° C range and typically germinates in about 3 days depending on temperature um they also prefer relatively high humidity so don't let the kale seeds dry out and even cover them if you are in a drier climate with some row cover or something um when you're seeding them cover them lightly with some soil mix or some vermiculite or something to just hold in that moisture also consider priming them as discussed in this video uh that may speed up and increase germination as well as load uh the seeds with beneficial microbes if you use a good compost tea or some other inoculant uh for spring kale we start our first round in late January or early February here in Kentucky zone 6 b/ 7A now that they've updated the hardiness Maps um kale is a bial so it requires a warm period followed by a cold period followed by a warm period period to go to flow and go to seed usually that cold period is called winter uh with The warm periods being fall and summer respectively but if you put the crop out too early in the spring and the temperatures fluctuate too dramatically in that way warm cold warm um you can wind up inadvertently vernalizing your crop meaning it's going to go to seed instead of to well Leaf if you plant it early before your last chance of frost just make sure to keep it covered uh with some sort of row cover that will help to regulate the temperature a little bit and keep it from flowering hopefully obviously the flowers can be delicious so it's not a total loss if they go to flour but if you were hoping for kale it's not exactly a win either to get kale flowers we often leave winter Brasa into just over winter into April and May and sell the flowers but they don't generally have as much Market appeal they're good for the bugs some customers will enjoy them chefs tend to like them they're certainly delicious but if you let those flowers go too long Tada weeds yeah all right so let's discuss fertility a little bit uh stop me if you've heard this one before but kale prefers well- drained soil weird in other words if you know that the place where you would like to put your kale or pretty much any other food crop does not drain very well you're going to need to manage the drainage uh watch this last video here for some tips on understanding and managing drainage and compaction um now now nutritionally Kale's considered a medium to heavy feeder especially if you'd like it to go all the way through a season like through an through the summer through the winter I know it's somewhat of a cop out to just say use compost in terms of fertility but kale really thrives in a good complete compost that releases its nitrogen and nutrients somewhat slowly over the course of a season um now might there be other nutritional considerations for kale sure and those can be addressed under the guidance of an agronomist uh because literally every single soil is going to be different but at least an inch or so of good finished nutritional compost added early will get you started perhaps even mix in some kelp to help flesh out any micronutrients that might be missing kelp is also uh good as a bio stimulant for microbes um just use it sparingly then you can either Sid dress the kale with alala compost or fish hydrate like these from Neptune's Harvest a few times throughout the season to keep it going um side dressing is simply applying a fertilizer ier as a little pickme up to the crop generally something nitrogenous like those I just listed um a mix is generally preferred just so the soil has some choices you could though if you see a specific deficiency in your crop also apply a folar spray that contains the deficient nutrient for leafy stuff though nitrogen is going to be a big part of what's missing as it makes up such a large percentage of the plant material if you can just dig a very shallow trench between rows and add the side dressing that way covering it up after you add it or you can build a complicated fertigation system to add fish fertilizer through the drip lines whatever makes sense for you on your scale you could just as easily just do that with a watering can on smaller scales now spacing uh I could not find a ton of info about yield and spacing in the literature at least I didn't see any um it seems that the recommendations vary from 12 in apart to 20 in apart which is like 30 to 50 cm um for bed spacing I recommend two rows on 30 and 36 in beds and three rows on 40 and 48 in beds you can maybe get away with four rows on a really wide bed like a 48 in bed if growing Outdoors um in the tunnels though the air flow may be a little iffy there preferably rows are spaced 12 to 18 in apart so you need you know a decent amount of space whatever this is make sure as you're planting the kale to water the transplants in and keep the soil relatively moist throughout its life now once kale has planted a secret message is sent out via a very minuscule text chat that alerts all the local flea beetles to a feast so be ready to cover your kale I recommend an insect netting of some sort uh I have used protect net for years and it's fine albe it a little expensive and not the longest lasting stuff uh it's better than the lightest row covers which are practically unusable after a season if that but you have to take care of the protect net I usually get three or four seasons out of it uh recently however we learned of another product recommended by assawaga Farm in this video called uh exclude net I'll link that in the show notes you can also use light row cover just not in the summer or it will protect from the flea beetles while suffocating your kale uh now because the kale is not a fuing plant I mean not intentionally a fuing plant though the immature seed pods on brasas are actually pretty tasty I like the ravish ones anyway because the fruit is not the crop that you're generally shooting for uh you can keep it covered as long as you like because it doesn't need pollination to create leaves though again air flow is critical for disease mitigation so you may want to uncover it here in humid Kentucky I find that once the kale reaches 10 or so in tall the flea beetles are not as much of an issue and I can remove the row cover um that of course alerts new pests which is exciting namely the Cabbage Moth which is actually the Cabbage butterfly but let's be honest it behavior is a little bit more mothy anyway the Cabbage butterfly lays eggs on Kale which turns into cabbage worms and not the most exciting thing to find in your Bunches of kale as a customer uh and of course those worms Devour the kale which also sucks to use the scientific nomenclature so what to do about it well the healthier your kale obviously the less all pests will be an issue but as the heat starts to come in in the spring kale tends to get a little more stressed out and that's when they become more susceptible picking on stressed out plants it's such a mothy thing to do so first make sure the beds are well watered well fertilized and keep the plants as happy as you can that will go a long way with pest prevention once you see worms you basically have two organic options handpick them which isn't that effective or spray them with BT or billus sensus this is a bacterium that kills the cabbage worms and is not broad spectrum meaning it won't just nuke every bug though it may have some not quite yet fully understood effects on microbial communities I believe that more research is being done there we'll see but generally it just kills the dang cabbage worms which is great um there are some ecological things you can do to combat pests uh like provide bird habitat for finches and sparrows and Rens Etc who are often need a lot of food in the spring for their Littles also don't remove those wasp nests if you can help it uh I know I have shown this clip before but this footage of this wasp eating a cabbage worm is arguably my most prized possession I love it I I think I could watch it all day long so satisfying I also saw wasp take a harlean beetle once I don't know what it did with it but I assume it didn't deposit it on another kale plant so that's good but I did not catch that one on film yet uh harlans are a difficult pest once established and they spread disease like jerks and I recommend fertilizing the second you see them to help the kale or whatever Brasa get through it um aphids are tougher and somewhat opposite obviously ladybugs and other beneficials will help you do what they can for the aphids um so you should increase their habitat but there are also some insecticidal soaps if it gets really bad uh you just have to be vigilant in the second UC aphids you've got aphids and they will spread really fast avoid adding a nitrogenous fertilizer because that can potentially worsen the problem uh there's a lot of research out there on aphid controls and maybe I'll do a whole video on aphids at some point because they're a problem but I did find one potentially applicable study that looked at the effect of milk and some other treatments on aphid populations and powdery mildew um control and found that milk not only decreased aphid concentrations but also increased a fungus called cladosporium clais sporio but this fungus parasitizes the apid which when reading through the paper seems like a surprise result for the researchers who just wanted to compare the milk to a sulfur fungicide for powdery mildew control interestingly the milk was comparable in that as well so milk who knew the other white meat how don't what's the milk phrase just do it failing My Generation here I hear people say that if your soil is really healthy you won't have any diseases or pests and like I said earlier the healthier your kale is that's generally true but also kind of misleading like sometimes it's simply soil or air temperatures that cause some stress or enough stress to cause disease or bring in pests or perhaps it's water sometimes plants need a longer transition period from the greenhouse to Outdoors uh so work on your soil health absolutely but also work on your good agricultural practices like protecting from pests and irrigating and all those things anyway if you can keep it Pest and disease free as well as weed free with mulches or well timed cultivations obviously then you can make it to harvest for kale Harvest I load up my wrist with rubber bands and pick Bunches of kale anywhere from 8 to 12 leaves depending on the size of the leaves I then pile those bunches into a clean bin and take them to the wash pack station uh you can also pick smaller leaves and simply bag those generally you shouldn't have to wash kale unless it's dusty or Sandy or muddy or you fear there may be a bug or two on it and it's going to be in a bag um if you're in a Sandy dry region where sand is often in the air please wash your kale I bought some from the grocery store once that upon inspection with my mouth had the texture of a beach which wasn't great if it's very hot outside also it may not hurt to dunk them just to get the field heat off for storability um the more you handle basically any crop the more damage they may see so I like to go from minimal handling so Harvest into the cooler that's it they can then be stored for a week or so in at Refrigeration temperature as I always like to point out microbes need moisture to proliferate and that includes the pathogenic ones so any wetness try and get that off before you start storing them um now if the bunches are going to a fridge they will need to be sealed from the air refrigerators are large dehydrators I mean they won't tell you that but that's that's what they are it's it's just a it's a known secret so plastic bags or large plastic containers will be a requisite for shelf life uh at Market keep bunches out of the Sun and wind as much as possible and refresh them often as I often say one wilty green makes the entire table look wilty watch our Farmers Market video for more General tips on that and keep a water bottle and cooler handy to help keep greens looking fresh oh and for a reward for watching this far this is our label maker I'll link it in the show notes you're welcome what else can I throw I don't think I can throw anything else in there otherwise some quick notes kale is a great yearround crop including the dead of winter uh the low moisture content in the leaves makes it extremely Hardy to the cold so that's fun and delicious um juicers are often looking for big bags of kale so that's one way to Market kale another Market is restaurants uh who may have specific needs for their kale so communicate with them before you just start producing it and bringing it the kale chip kale chips remember those I think that may have subsided a bit but who knows maybe there's still a market for it otherwise let me know what I missed or what I got wrong or what you would have added uh like this video If you like this video If you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the subscribe button if you are subscribed you're awesome also if you like these videos and they bring you actual values you can support them by buying a copy of the living soil handbook at noil growers.com or a hat or other merch join our patreon page at patreon.com Growers or just hit that super thanks button that works too otherwise thanks for watching we'll see you later bye on the outside looking in I really wasn't sure what I was getting did I record that oh good I wasn't sure what I was hoping for you see but you act like gravity and you are pulling me cuz you know what i w't f you know everything that gets me going you know what I w't think all the little things that I'm not showing you

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 69,395

Keywords: no till, no tillage, cover crops, no dig, small scale, agriculture, regenerative, vegetable, garden, market garden, hedge row, native, pollinators, north east, farming, kale, brassica, flea beetle, cabbage worm

Id: S948__7Arqs

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023