Kale Varieties Grown in Sub-irrigated Earthboxes

The interest in home gardens and growing fresh produce is increasing at a rapid pace. However, urban gardeners with smaller yards are turning to growing vegetables in containers. Self-irrigated containers offer a successful gardening concept for gardeners with limited space such as small yards, porches, or even balconies to grow vegetables. The goal of this project was to evaluate 11 varieties of kale (Brassica oleracea var. sabellica). The varieties grown were: flat-leaved kale (Premier, Siberian, Beira, Red Russian and Hanover Salad), curly kale (Starbor, Olympic Red, Vates and Scarlet) and dinosaur kale (Lacinto Dinosaur, Toscano and Black Magic). All were grown in peat-based container media in commercially available sub-irrigated containers called EarthBoxes. Three week old seedlings were transplanted on November 3, 2015. A replicate consisted of an EarthBox with six transplants of a single variety and there were four replicates of each variety. We applied a pre-plant fertilizer consisting of 370g of 13-13-13 per EarthBox and all were drip irrigated three times a week. On December 15, 2015, 42 days after transplanting, half of the plants growing in each EarthBox were harvested. Data collected consisted of harvest fresh weight, stem width and plant height. The flat-leaved varieties produced greater fresh harvest weights and stem diameters than the curly and dinosaur varieties which were similar. The plant heights at harvest were all similar except for the curly varieties Starbor and Vates which were reduced. All the varieties grew extremely well indicating that the concept of producing kale in sub-irrigated containers is a viable growing solution for urban gardeners with limited space.