They’re not on my list of favorite greens. That honor is bestowed on sweet potato leaves, callaloo (amaranth), various kinds of kale and spinach. However stopping by a community garden I saw the collards below.

In a garden overly devoted to beans (monoculture), it was a welcome, glorious sight. I made it a point, when I was in the neighborhood, to park near the garden just so I could look at it. A few weeks ago, I stopped by and it looked like this:

Some one, some family, will eat well, I thought. I was also inspired to try my hand at growing this green admittedly not one of my favorites. I bought a starter plant from a local farm, re-potted it and aside from lackadaisical watering, basically left alone. Yesterday, it rained, heavily. This is what the plant looked like earlier today:

I am also practicing what I call lackadaisical gardening with some kale planted in my mother’s yard. I have watered it even less than I have the collards. It appears to not need my care or attention:

When we lived in Brookline and community gardened, my plot neighbor had kale growing taller than me! I neglected to ask her how long she had been growing the kale but it had to be a minimum of 2-4 years. It could almost be said to be growing wild, if such a thing is possible in a community garden. Of course the growth is due to the self-seeding nature of the vegetable.  Now, kale is not on my list of native plants that I want to populate my mother’s yard with but the nutritional value outweighs that consideration.

With both the kale and the collards I plan on continue to not paying them any attention. I want to see how they do, especially with winter around the corner!