[lettice]

Grew Curly Kale for the first time last year, sown last Spring in successive sowings and still picking the crop now, although its just really the tops that are producing now, but still a good few pickings on most of the plants left.
The crop was delicious and very productive from mid summer, through Autumn and over winter to now and nothing (slugs, snails or butterflies) touched it in the open.

I grew Westland Autumn variety and have a new pack of seeds ready to go in during March.

But just curious as to saving the seed, it seems that they flower eventually, but after how long?
I was thinking of pulling up a few of the plants and moving to a corner of the garden to flower and then retrieve the seeds.
Has anyone ever saved kale seeds?

[Christine]

Nope but it seems you have to let it flower and then let the seed pods develop and then ripen. Seeds will need drying properly to store for the next sowing.

However, if your curly kale was an F1 variety it won't come back true. You need to be buying from somewhere like Real Seeds that do open source seeds.

And the other warning is that brassicas like kale and cabbage and brussels will cross with each other when they flower due to the activities of flying insects. So you need a cage to keep out these insects.

Well that's what I've learned from reading about. The internet's a wonderful place. I'm looking at doing seed saving for the next gardeners' association newsletter which is why I have gleaned some basic information.

[surbie100]

Garden organic have good info on saving seeds from brassicas here: http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/sites/www.gardenorganic.org.uk/files/resources/hsl/18_Brassicas.pdf

And, if you're interested, there is some more general info on seed saving here: http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=118458.0