Kitchen Garden Forum

Has anyone experience of cultivating sea kale? If so how was it and where can one obtain roots/corms whatever to get started??

Dragon, try a search of the forum, there are six topics with seakale in them and this one viewtopic.php?t=2478&highlight=seakale looks relevant.

You could PM some of the people who seem to have experience.

Thanks - I did try looking - obviously not well enough!!

No worries, btw it was seakale, not sea kale.

Marshalls have thongs (i.e. root cuttings) of variety Angers
http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/rkmain ... ODE=M28923
The Organic Gardening Catalogue have seeds of variety Lilywhite
http://www.organiccatalog.com/catalog/a ... &x=24&y=10
For information on how to grow try searching Crambe maritima - searches on seakale throw up too much stuff on "seakale" beet and kale.

To get you started here's a useful link
http://www.pfaf.org/database/plants.php?Crambe+maritima
Hope this helps
Alan

Rivers Nursery was one of the most important fruit nurseries in the UK, if not the world, established in 1725, but alas no more, though their orchard survives locally as a community garden.

Clearing my late mothers house I found a copy of Rivers 1935 - 1936 Catalogue, wherein I found:

Purple Seakale
Strong forcing crowns, 30/- 100; 4/- doz.
Strong planting crowns, 15/- 100; 2/- doz.


Also, Apples.
Bush and Pyramid, two years 3/-; three and four years, 4/- and 5/-; larger trees, 7/6 and 10/6 each.

We often visit the South Coast where this (or a variety of it) can be found growing wild on the perimeters of shingle beaches. I've often been tempted to pick a little and try cooking it but haven't because I suspect it may beprotected as a wild plant. (Does anybody know?). The leaves feel very leathery - (they need to be to survive in that salty environment) and I imagine that it's pretty tough stuff to eat, even though Ray Mears would probably be happy noshing it and pronouncing it "delicious".

Hi Primrose,
You certainly would find the leaves of wild Sea kale very hoary. It's scientific name is Crambe Maritima.
When you grow it for culinary purposes you eat the blanched stems when young and very tasty they are too.
JB.