Kitchen Garden Forum

I've grown this for a couple of years and ought to know the answer to this but don't. I always start picking my leaves from the bottom and work up, which means that by the end of the season my plants are quite tall with all the growth at the top.

If I picked the centre out instead would I start getting subsidiary little sideshoots appearing lower down the stalk?

Lettuce are arranged similarly but heart up, and if you cut not right at the base but a little way up you can cut your lettuce and eat it then it will reshoot from the base producing more leaves, and even produce seed.
Hard to explain but emilia hazlip shows how in her you tube synergistic garden video. So my guess is yes if you let it grow a bit first it will, I haven't tried it, just trying to work it out logically. You could try one as a test. Then again when I let my non-hearting winter lettuce seed they elongate up from the centre with a seed head and also produce seed heads lower down from each leaf axil as well as the top. If you cut the top too soon there would not be many leaf axils to sprout? LOL Just thinking aloud, and trying to be helpful

I haven't grown this particular variety but I would have thought it is like all Kale, the top young leaves would be more tender and succulent and the more you pick the more new tender growth will appear.
You can only try and see.
Beryl.

Don't know if this is the "correct" way, but I do what Primrose already does.

Yes, you end up with tall'ish plants, but I've picked leaves from our Cavalo for many months like this with no apparent ill effects.

Hi Primrose,
If you were to pick from the centre you would take the growing head out of the plant and effectively kill the plant!
If you continue as you have been doing then the plant will live for a very long time giving you a plentiful supply.
It is exactly the same with loose leafed lettuces. With the Lollo series both Rossa and Bionda allow the plant to get a decent mound and commence picking from the outer edges and you will be amazed at how much you can get out of a single lettuce. I have stretched six lettuces over a complete salad season (feeding two mouths) then let them go up to seed and had seed for next year from them. This was growing in two litre pots on the outside benches and when going up to seed put them on the benches in the tunnels different varieties in different tunnels.
JB.

thanks JB. You've confirmed what I suspected so I'll carry on picking the lower leaves first. Yes, some of the loose leaved lettuces carry on for ages. I've had some going that they've almost become a bit of an embarrassment because some of my later sown ones are now ready for picking too and I don't like to show too much favouratism !

I can't agree with this.

I grow Cavalo Nero and for the past couple of years, when they've got too tall, have taken out the centre. The plants have then thrown out new growth, with more than one head, from the cut stem.

I cut back one of the 2009 plants a couple of months ago and it is still producing pickable leaves!

Hi Chantal,
Cavalo Nero is not quite the conventional Kale as we know it but all Kale's give out side shoots and I think that the plant that you took the head out of was of some age and these are the side shoots that would grow normally but unusually high on the plant but if the plant was quite young when you decapitated it I suspect that would be an end of it.
This is only a thought and maybe I am totally wrong.
JB.

Chantal has it I think, as I figured out logically it has to grow a bit first then when you cut the top, it will shoot, as johnboy also rightly says cut too low and there is nothing to shoot.or very little.

Hi JB, you may well be right.

So, in the interests of science, when my Cavalo Nero grow a bit bigger (just planted out), I will decapitate one of them and report back

Hi Chantal.
You little tinker!
JB.

I will also decapitate one of mine and see what happens. I suspect we'll have to wait until full growth is achieved first, whatever stage that is.

Can you not pick the upper leaves without beheading (taking out the growing tip?)

Beryl.

I have usually done this (picked top leaves without "beheading"), Beryl, and they have NOT sprouted sideways, so I think I will try it Chantal's way this year. Some of our plants are just getting ready for the first pick.

OKay - just a thought. I shall keep watching this one - interesting.
Thanks Monika
Beryl.