Bunching collards.

Last year I grew a bunch of collards and they grew beautifully, but you had to cut each leaf off. The leaves kind of grew out wards on all the plants.

When I go to the corner store I always see that the collards they get in are on a bunch. the leaves are plentiful, tall and are cut across the bottom and hold together like a celery stalk is the best way I cna think to describe it.

How do you grow collards that will be upright and so ya only have to make one wack at the bottom and have a nice bunch all held together?

Starlight. Almost all collard cultivars grow similar to a cabbage without heading. You simply let them grow full size and cut the whole plant,. Some of the old timers do cut the bottom leaves and leave the tops to grow more leaves. In the spring toy see tall stems with a little tuft of leaves ate the top. The cultivar Georgia is usually used for this purpose. Ilike the tender leaves so I plant a lot and cut and cokk the whole plant. Ther are collards which form semi-heads ( Cabbage Collard and Morris Heading). The cabbage collard is the best.

I never cut my plants. I harvest leaves as they become the size I want then they continue to produce leaves for later harvest. We use leaves of all sizes and only pull the plants out after hot weather has made them too tough to snap the leaf stems.

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I do as bigred does - harvest the leaves I want and leave the plant to grow. That's important to me as I have limited space and want to drag out the harvest till it gets too hot. I wonder when you planted your collards? They will grow as you describe if the weather's too hot for them.

Thanks evevrybody. I got some Georgia and think the other is some Vates seeds.

Last year I planted collards near the end of august and was eating leaves about a week before Christmas and had put them like 18" apart.

I thought I was doing somethign wrong, cuz the local guy sells his to the small grocery stores and they all in one bunch and the bunches are like almost 2 and half to three feet long and have about 8 to 10 leaves in a bunch and mine sure didn't look like that.

His ya can barely get one bunch ina grocery sack it fills it up and stands way up over the top and there I was out cutting bottom leaves one at a time going down the row.

I thought all collard was supposed to look like the grocery store guys.

They do if you let the whole plant grow. There are several ways to handle collards. Mostly it is a matter of how you harvest, but some cultivars are better for bunching than others. Georgia has widely spaced leaves and is better for the one leaf at a time harvest. Most modern cultivars have close spaced leaves which are better for bunching. Vates for example is better for bunching than Georgia. Top Bunch, Blue Max etc are even better.

I grow Georgia because I sell at farmers market and Georgia gives me the best yeild over a long period of time so I guess it's all depends on what your using them for.Think I'll give Top Bunch and Blue Max a try next spring. Heard of Vates before but never grown any. May just grow some to see how they produce and taste.

Oh....... Learned something new. Thanksfor th einformation and pics FarmerDill. : ) Still trying to get the hang of all these Southern veggies. You and Bigred would have laughed your heads off at the first time I ever tried to cook collards. What a disaster. I had neighbors over for dinner and thought I would impress them by cooking some. The whole mess went into the trash. It was still half raw, and tough as nails and I didn't know about seasoning it. At least the cornbread which was a firdt that day too, had turned out ok. LOL

If ya wanted an even bigger laugh ya should have seen what happened when I tried to fix mustard greens. I don't care for them. Collards remind me of canned spinich which I love, but haven't devloped a taste for mustards. A friend was harvesting hers when I asked what they was. She then would take hers she said and put them in a washing machine to clean. The idea of cleanign veggies in a washer tripped me out. But ya gotta give southerners credit They very resourceful.

She gave me a bunch and I went home to wash them. I stuffed them in th emachine, added a bit of soap and had a nightmare and a half. I was cleaning mustard green pieces out of the machine and it's little holes for a week. Never tried that again.

BigRed. Don't know if T&M still having there sale or not, but they was having a 50% off sale and that where I got the Vates seed from. I saw collards on sale and just clicked. There was a sale and figured a person could nevre have to many veggie seeds. Didn't know they was Vates until the package arrived and saw the word in parenthesis under neath the collard word.

I just hope I get some rain. I almost afraid to put cool crops in that they gonna be all parched too, but sure do love a mess of collards with bacon or ham in it. : )

ROTFLMAO!

I've never heard of putting green in the washing machine before...LOL I toss mine in the back of the Gator,hose them down,toss them around...hose them off again and repeat.

If your using the bigger leaves,you need to cut the big mid-rib and stem out.

I'm not too happy w/ T&M right now. I just bought digitalis"Candy Mountain"(and some other seeds during their 50%sale) sewed some of the digitalis and got very little germination. I sewed digitalis seeds from other sources and my gardens and they all came up like gangbusters. Not the first time I've had bad germination from T&M seeds. Don't know why I bother to order from them.

P

I grew mustard for the first time this year - raw it's as hot as horseradish! I blanched them in boiling water and drained - then they are not so hot, but they're good.

Luckily, we mulched with grass so well, the leaves are pristine clean right from the garden.

But cleaning most greens is a pain - I think I would have tried the machine too! : ))

What kind of mustards? I grow and eat mustards but never had any be what I would consider hot.....but then I've never eaten horseradish either.

I got so tired of weeds,I bought weed block and put it down on the pathways. I generally use grass clippings,pineneedles and oak leaves I've chopped up w/ my mulching mower under the plants but not this time of year with so many weed and grasses setting seed. These I put on a burn pile on the garden for the ash to till into the soil.My compost pile doesn't get hot enough to kill weed and grass seed.

I love my Gator. It has a dump bed and it's small enough to back up close to the kitchen door to wash veggies w/ spray nosel set on full,in the bed. Since my driveway is sloped,I just leave the veggies in the bed and let the excess water drain off before I toss then into a laundry basket to take into the kitchen.

My hub's traded a 4 wheeler for the Gator to use out in the woods when hunting to haul game back to the house but I kinda claimed it as my own...LOL...you know how we women are..what's mine is mine and what your's is mine too...LOL

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Hey, I hadn't either, but then have seen alot of things done down here that never would thought of and it gets the job done. I'll give anythign a try once and if it works, will give it a second try. LOL That one definately not.

She tripped me out cuz she would cut the field, and just do load after load of greens in her machine. It worked for her, but I must have done something wrong.

I think if I ever tried a washing machine again, it would be the kind we had as a kid. the round white tub with no topand a hand wringer machine on the top. Ya could wash the greens and then send them through the roller to dry. : )

Compostr. Thanks. That is just the taste. never could figure out why I didn't like mustard and what the funny taste was to me, now I know. It been so long since I had horseradish forgot all about it. Don't care for it either and a little goes along way.

Having a Gator sound slike fun. Maybe oneday, but need to many other things first. LOL... Ar least most gardens are pretty empty when deer hunting season going on. Share and share alike. : )