Topic: sea kale

[ACE]

I have just been reading about this plant. I do have a sea kale forcer somewhere I can drag out, it was just a prop in a seaside show garden we built once. I can also go foraging along the dunes and see if there are any seedlings later, it will split but I don't want to dig up a mature plant. It is supposed to be like asparagus when it is forced and used like ordinary kale with young leaves. Does anybody grow this stuff for a few tips.

[Obelixx]

Tried this in our Belgian veggie plot years ago.  It didn't like the wet tho and didn't do well despite being in a raised bed in a veggie plot that was itself raised from the ground level of the back of the house and held up by a metre high sleeper wall.

I think it likes good fertile soil but with better drainage.

[ed dibbles]

I have a plant purchased and planted about a month ago so it will be some time before forcing begins. It's supposed to have a cabbage type flavour. I wonder if the cabbage whites like it.

[saddad]

It's not a brassica, so it won't be at the top of their hit list...

[galina]

It is a brassica.  Just a more distant relative to our normal brassicas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crambe_maritima

[saddad]

Thanks for the correction Galina... scrub my earlier comment... the whites go for anything even remotely cabbage like...

[Vinlander]

One of the TV bush tucker guys - probably Ray Mears - went out foraging with a guy who insisted that roasted sea kale roots were used as a massive source of carbs for our ancestors.

Apparently the roots were huge but easily dug out and they tasted good straight from the embers.

I don't expect anyone to act on this - they take decades to grow big enough and they are protected in the wild (quite rightly).

Cheers.