November 9, 2017

Good morning, a fellow gardener suggested that I grow tree collard greens. Tree collard greens are an interesting plant and joins the ranks of kale and chard as a green that survives quite well year round in West Texas.

This is a rather unique plant in that it is propagated by cuttings. It generally does not flower and when it does it is not true to the parent. Being in the Brassica family it has the survival mechanism where the flowers of the same plant cannot pollinate that plants flowers. Pollen must come from a different plant. Since these plants do not have the ability to bloom on a regular basis, the pollen would have to come from another mustard family plant and thus it would no longer be a tree collard.

So there is the need to root cuttings.

Tree collards  culture suggests that the plants be staked. When staked they can grow 6 + feet tall.

It is interesting that the USDA hardiness zone for this plant coincides with Alpines (zone 7). It must be noted that hardiness zones are about what the potential chill is and not what the regular chill is. Zone 7 has the potential low of zero. My garden friend mentioned that her collards got zapped pretty bad with last winters cold snaps.

An observation about last winter, there never was enough cooling to develop cold hardiness in any of the plants. It would be warm one day and then blast down into freezing temperatures. One occasion the day before was in the 60's. The morning of the freeze was 11 and then the mercury shot well above freezing. Without protection the majority of plants would succumb to the temperature stress. Because I cover my garden during the winter, the garden was able to survive this torture.

Ah yes back to tree collards. I have purchased three cuttings in early September. All three have started to develop side shoots. I plan to over winter them in the house and get them to be well rooted plants. I do not stake plants in my garden. This is done so that it is very easy to cover  my garden in the event of a cold snap.

The one plant I intend to plant outside will be planted under my pet mesquite tree so that is can get shade through the summer. There could be a watering issue from the mesquite roots but this can be monitored. This collard tree will be planted so that it can sprawl. It will be interesting to see how well this plant does as a perennial. 

The other two will be planted in a large pot in the garden so that it can be placed in the well house in the event of a cold snap.

 

I suspect hat having another year round green will be well received.

This could be very interesting.