How to Grow our FAVORITE Collard Greens from (SEED to Harvest) at Home

well good morning friends one of my favorite fall vegetables is a good old collard green we'll be right back after the break gonna plant some of these today together be right back well welcome back today we're gonna plant some collard greens I got these seeds at Johnny's seed comm online if you want to get some of these for yourself a good place to go and get seeds these are called top bunch top bunch collard greens I got my tree seed tray ready I'm gonna plant these in seed trays and store them in my outdoor seed starting rack this is a great fall vegetable and I plant them in time tell you how I'm just in time for Thanksgiving because man they go good with that turkey so today we're gonna get them started in the seed trays get them in the seed starting racking we're going to watch the progression of these these collard greens all the way up to the day we harvest them together okay so let's get these into the seed seed cups and get this show started okay here's how I start all of my seeds from I use a 1020 start and tray and I like to use the ones with the drain holes because I start my seeds outdoors so I don't have a problem with the drainage of the water seeping through and getting anything wet on the inside of my house or the inside of an indoor container seed starting container because I do all my seed starting outside so I like to have the drain holes in mine because I want to keep my cuts I want the water to fall completely through my cups and and let me add water as needed instead of them standing in water for too long of a period of time which rots my seeds okay so that's hot that's why I use the 10/22 drain tray now I use my cups my seed starting cups I like to use the ones that have a you know at least a two to three inch deep cell because I want to get a good root system through here before I try to push pull that our little seedling out of there next thing I do is I add my seed starting mix and I make my own seed starting mix so if you want to learn how to make this stuff at home you can we have a video on our channel that explains how to do that and demonstrates it pretty clear or you can if you only have one or two trays to do then just simply go buy some seed starting mix at your local nursery for me I have many many seeds trays that I need to start so it's more economical for me to make my own seed starting mix okay so next thing I do is I used to mix now fill up my tray my seeds seed starting cells once I have it good and leveled off like this then I come back through here and I mash in all of these seeds cells I'm actually been good and tight use your fingers push them down in there because this thing is just full of air and if you have air inside these cells when you're trying to start your seeds they're not going to germinate you know you just wasted your money and your time and very disappointing so you want to keep these things good and tight when you get ready to start so push them down good once I have them down packed in there pretty tight the next thing I do is I pre-moistened some people pre-moistened their soil before they put it in but I've always found it easier to do it like this so you can do it either way you want it's up to you now that I got it tight I pre-moistened each cell by flooding it a little bit okay let that soak down just for a few seconds you see it just gobbles up that moisture it's so dry once I got it where I don't see the water standing anymore then I camp down the track now it's really good and tight and it's moist I'm gonna use some spinach seeds here for this demonstration simply because the seeds are nice and big and you can see them on the camera here's the seeds now what I like to do is I like to put two to three seeds in each cell I'll let those seeds germinate and as the seedlings get up mature a little bit bigger we're inch or so tall I'll come well in with a pair of scissors and snip off you know the weakest looking seedlings and keep the best one so I thin it down to where I have one seedling for each tray so let's start out by putting a couple seeds and each one of these cells and I try to make sure I get them kind of close to the middle of the cell because if you don't they run out to the end you know to the edge of the cup and I just don't like them to grow down the edge of the cup okay after I get the seeds in the cups when I come back and I add in some more soil and level that back off again to where you got right out about a quarter of an inch of soil on top of those seeds and right now this looks like I got more than a quarter inch but keep in mind it's full of air so once I get it in there again I mash it down a little bit I'll hit it with a little bit of water you'll see it sink down some more so I'm getting to that quarter inch that magic quarter inch mark I'm looking for of soil over the top of the seed you don't have to add very much water that time and again I tamp it down okay got them seats in pumping a little name tag in there got them planning let's get them into the seed starting racking get this show on the road there we go got two collard greens in the rack got them growing so we'll be back in two days ahead and we'll watch this all the way out do we harvest them so we'll see you soon well a collard greens I've been in seed starting Rockford for two weeks so let's take a look at it today and see how much progress we've made well as you can see they've come up and they've made some beautiful little seedlings I've got lots of true leaves these things are about three inches tall right now so it looks like we're about ready to start hardening these things off and I get them out into the earth garden so let's get these about another week I'll have them we'll start getting them hardened off this week and we'll get these planted we'll see you back here in about a week well welcome back we've been working on our collard greens on the hardened table for the last few days and they bout ready to go out into the earth garden today so I wanted to let you walk you through what I'm planning to do this morning I'm going to go out there to the earth garden I'm going to prepare that ground like I always do for all of my starter plants like this when I put them in out there first thing I'm gonna do is take my 4 inch cultivator them I'll cultivate that a couple of rows that I'm gonna put in I'm gonna grade it out with my grade and rake and get it nice and smooth then I'm gonna take my guide string and put it on my my row spacing to set my spacing correctly I like to use 36 inches I used to use 30 inches in Virginia and it got a little crowded as these things mature and cascade it out so I increased that at 36 inches when I got to Florida and I think it's going to be a lot better off row spacing excuse me the after I get the roast established I'll go through and I'm going to dig my little holes and I'm gonna put them in about 30 inches apart each plant and I'm gonna dig my hole and I'm going to use a piece of fish with some garden lime on top of the fish you know the animals don't smell it I think I'm pretty safe from the animals now with the with the fence but you know a raccoon or something could probably still get through here if you really wanted to so I use that lime to mask the smell of that fish decomposing so they don't come dig up and plant you know trying to get to the fish so while put that on there and then I'm going to use some some blood meal because I want to encourage lots of leaf growth with this collard green this is um you know the top bunch collard greens got a pretty nice leafy top on it but I'm going to give them some blood meal to boost the nitrogen up and get a little bit more foliage and much healthier foliage and after I get them in water man and God takes over from there and we'll watch the progression of these all the way out so let's get started [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh there we go we got two rows of collard greens put in the ground top bunch collard greens so we'll be looking forward to these in the days ahead as we get closer to the holidays because I really like having these at Thanksgiving so hopefully we'll have a frost by Thanksgiving anyway we'll keep up with the progression of these little plants as they mature over the weeks ahead and we'll keep bringing that to you so we'll be back here in a couple of weeks and we'll watch the development of these plants all the way up to harvest see in a couple of weeks well our top bunch collard greens are really doing well and I think they're gonna be ready just in time for Thanksgiving and I sure hope so my daughter Samantha and my grandson and her husband are gonna come over and eat with us and my daughter loves daddy's collard greens so I'm gonna make her up a big ol bunch of them when she gets here but anyway these are doing well I think they're ready just you could start picking and harvesting these right now but I'm hoping to get a little frost on before I can harvest them we may get one before Thanksgiving maybe not but it is Florida but they'll still be good and if I don't get a frost on them in November I'll probably maybe get one in December and I'll have it for Christmas too so either way I'm gonna have plenty of collard greens so we'll be back in the days ahead when we harvest some of these and I want to I want to harvest a mess and I'll show you how I cut these up and cook them and maybe you can have collard greens for supper so we'll see back here in days ahead see you soon well today's a big day we're going to get to harvesters top bunch collard greens I'm gonna make up a mess for my my daughter Samantha she's coming over to visit me today so that's a big day for me I'm really looking forward to seeing or having I don't get to see her very much even though we moved down to Florida we're still two and a half hours apart so it's kind of difficult to see each other as as we'd like to but today she's coming to visit me she's bringing my grandson for me to visit with and her husband and we're gonna have a nice little meal together and cement the loves daddy's collard greens so I promised her I'd make her some so we're gonna make them today and take a look at these collard greens they really came out really nice really good a variety of collard greens I'm gonna harvest these around the bottom and work my way up and get up enough a mess so I can make a nice meal these if I harvest them you know picking off the leaves from the bottom up that allows the middle to continue to grow and you can get multiple harvest out of these so let's get started and getting some of these these something getting ready to eat [Music] [Applause] okay I got my collard greens all harvested and I got them rinsed off really well over here in the sink and these things are usually pretty clean when they come out of the garden they they don't they don't take a whole lot to clean up really but these are beautiful top bunch collards and I just wanted to demonstrate with you how I prepare these for cooking and maybe you might want to try this yourself the first thing I do is I come up to the about to one third foot front away from the top of the leaf and I grab a hold of that stem right there and I break it like that then I take that and I rip it right back out of the out of the leaf see and that that is now chicken food and see what it does and it it debones it so what I do at this point is I take that beautiful leaf I fold it over like this and I roll it make a nice roll then I take it and I cut it in real thin little strips see and that makes little ribbons and makes it cook easier makes it more tender and it's much easier to eat when you get ready to eat it see how it ribbons out nice beautiful little ribbons very easy to eat very easy to cook so I'll fill up my pot with all my little ribbons and the next thing I do is I'll add in some salt and a couple of pieces of hog jowls and I'll let these simmer on medium high for you know let them simmer on medium high for a couple hours into a nice and tender so let me get the rest of these cut up and Center Samantha gets here we'll give it a taste test make sure they're still good well we finally got a collard greens cooked up and I got a nice mess of them for you did my baby you did this is my little girl Samantha I'm gonna give her a little taste of daddy's special collard greens see how good they cook up when I have ribbing them out oh sure used to that huh and I might be a little hot you can check that out see if it's up to snuff mmm so good thank you daddy you're welcome mm-hmm anyway we thank you for watching and glad you came to visit me today and enjoyed some collard greens so until we see you next time always remember by his hands we are fed give us Lord our daily bread amen [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hollis and Nancys Homestead

Views: 168,089

Keywords: how to grow collard green at home, collard green, progression growing guide, growing guide, plant collard green, hollisnancyshomestead, how, how to grow collard green in the garden bed, how to grow collard green in the garden, how to grow collard green from seed, how to grow collard green from seed to harvest, how to grow collard green, favorite collard green, fall garden, fall harvest, greens, growyourownfood, seed to harvest, at home, collard greens, collards, gardening, top bunch

Id: aHm-Mcf-w7A

Length: 20min 47sec (1247 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020