greens

[asakiyume]

A guy I follow on Twitter is doing a couple of polls about greens (the things you eat, not the members of the political party... I mean if you're a cannibal that distinction might not be valid but I suspect for most of you it is, plus--no capitalization!)

Here is a link.

For those of you as click-averse as I am, there are two groups of greens:

First group:

chard
collards
kale
spinach

Second group:

beet greens
cress
mustard greens
turnip greens

You have to choose your favorite for cooking in each group. (You can go vote if you want--it will add a new dimension to his polling base.)

So .... do you all have favorites? Opinions? Beloved recipes? I cook spinach, kale, and beet greens; I have cooked mustard greens now and then, and sometimes chard. I did not know you could *eat* turnip greens--it's an exciting new piece of information.

Comments

[threemeninaboat]

I grow and cook all of those but am oft plagued by "kale lice."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevicoryne_brassicae

[asakiyume]

Ooo, nasty little critters--well, nasty if you're hoping to get a good batch of kale, anyway.

The times I've tried to grow kale, my problem has been tired soil rather than kale lice, but I've had problems like that with other vegetables. Gardening, man. It's heartbreak.

[amaebi]

Heartbreak unless you develop a cheery and accustomed relationship with death.

[asakiyume]

It's also not an activity that puts up with procrastination: you need to do a thing in its season or you're going to miss your chance.

[amaebi]

Some things are more copacetic than others, but yeah. And greens are copacetic! (Tropical fruiting things like tomatoes and peppers are not.)

[ivy]

Have you tried lasagna mulching for a couple years on top of the problem area? That worked wonders for me on uncertain soil.

[asakiyume]

I always have great **intentions** to try things like this, but I've rarely carried them out in practice. For instance, I have a couple of compost bins in the backyard, but I've rarely brought the compost up and, y'know, actually put it on the garden, and when I have, I haven't done so very thickly. A couple of times when I was gardening more earnestly, I went to horse farms and filled bags with old manure to bring back. I'm kind of at peace with it though: I know I'm getting out of it what I put in, and that if I put in more--well, I could still have a bad outcome because: agriculture, but--I'd get more out.