Growing, Cooking, and Eating Collard Greens
There are few things as fulfilling to me as heading out to the garden or the chicken coop and collecting food for a meal we will soon be eating. As we continue to learn about healing our land and producing food in a very different terrain and environment than we came from, there have been only a handful of vegetables we have been successful with.
Sweet potatoes, beans, lettuce, the few beets I skeptically threw into the ground which are now shockingly healthy and huge in our clay soil.
And then there are the collard greens. It all sounds very southern, but if we could just grow these nutritious leafy greens, sweet potatoes, and beans – all in abundance – that that could be a huge part of our food needs. A couple of calorie crops and some greens is all we really need.
That hasn’t stopped us from planting perennial trees and shrubs – 3 more apple trees, a couple of fig trees, and another blueberry bush are all going into the ground today. Oh and the cabbage, peas, red potatoes, garlic, onions, herbs, tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, and peppers are coming along too… because we just can’t help ourselves.
But these collard greens have been a consistent source of nourishment for us over the past few months. From approximately 6 plants we have gotten a generous bunch of greens pretty much every other day.
- I have made big pots of greens with bacon and onion and garlic.
- I have made stir fry after stir fry with collards and carrots and all of that pork I canned this winter.
- I have made frittatas with homegrown eggs and a bit of bacon and a generous amount of greens.
- They have become pork stew and rooster soup and simply a delicious side dish when sauteed in lard with an onion.
I think we’ll be able to squeeze a few more weeks of harvest out of these guys before they bolt. When we ordered seed in January I found a couple of heat-tolerant heirloom varieties, Green Glaze & Variegated, that I’ll be planting as soon as the rest of those beets come out.
They say the Green Glaze variety could produce greens for us for years due to its heat and frost-tolerance.
I’m all for perennial collard greens.
Really big holes for the apple trees, backfilled with peat and soil mix. Apple trees hate clay, so you have to give them room for their roots to establish. Blueberries love acid soil so back fill with soil and sawdust(pine) and they should do well too. They do need 2 varieties to cross pollenate and you definately need southern heat tolerant types for all your fruit trees and bushes. Best of luck with your new plantings!!!! I’m still waiting for the garden to dry out but I planted a peach tree, 2 plums, and another pear yesterday. Pears handle clay soil pretty well by the way.
Thank you for these ideas! Our summer garden is in, but we still have collard greens from last fall, which amazingly made it through the winter. They’re threatening to bolt, but I think by the time they do, kale and lettuces will be ready to eat, followed by berries, potatoes, and tomatoes. This was a great reminder to use what we have right now.
Would be able to post some recipes?
At a guess – our nearest equivalent here in Britain would be spring greens?
I am all in favour of having some versatile leafy greens in the garden and think they have a multitude of uses. In my case – I like them steamed with maybe some olive oil and lemon juice on the one hand or something like tahini sauce on the other hand.
I shall be moving at some point this year to a house with a garden at last and a bigger kitchen – so will look forward to trying out some of your kitchen ideas then. I’ve saved the sourdough pancakes idea as being a very good way of using up leftover sourdough starter – as one of the things I’m planning on is trying out some fermented food (besides just making my own yogurt and buying some fermented cabbage I’ve found on sale nearby). Roll on….
Try planting one or two Rosemary Bushes and a couple of Sage plants. In our Texas climate they are Perennial and are an
awesome herb for flavoring chicken 🙂
Berries love acid soil. Peaches/plums/pears grow well here.
Isn’t it fun to adapt recipes to what you have growing on the homestead? I’m reminded of my Southern Minestrone – tomatoes, peppers, black-eyed peas, whatever green is growing, yellow squash,along with pasta. Almost sounds like Burgoo, just with macaroni. Hmmmm. Or the year that I planted squash literally with a digging stick. God blessed us and every evening when David came I’d say, “Guess what we’re having for dinner?” There was fried squash, boiled squash, braised squash, squash chili . . .
Judy On Big Turtle Creek