Skip to product information
Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
  • Ethiopian Kale
Ethiopian Kale

Brassica carinata
$4.50
Description


We originally found this in 2014 from Echo Florida's seed collection and loved it right away. It's one of those plants that checks all our boxes: easy to grow, tasty, self-sowing, easy to save seeds, flowers that are tasty to both people and pollinators.

It's not a true kale, so don't consider this a replacement for traditional kale you're used to. It's unique in its own way; not quite a kale and not quite a mustard, but a magical combination of both.

We trialed this in our 2018-2019 growing season in partnership with the University of Florida Field & Fork program. Over two semesters, undergraduate students helped design the study and collect data with our support. Not surprisingly, it came out as the superior variety, especially as a fall planted vegetable. It won across the board in all categories: flavor, vigor, uniformity and yield. It was overwhelmingly the favorite in the taste trials, described as "thick, rich, spicy, garlicky, delicious, and funky!" Even when it's flowering, it still tastes good.

It gets much taller than a traditional kale, is multi-branching and has smaller leaves, producing vigorously. It stands up well in warmer weather, but performs best when planted during cooler months, compared to a spring planted crop. When the spring insects descended on the field, Ethiopian kale withstood the assault much better than the others.

Local testimonials: 

"Ethiopian kale was the clear winner for brassicas in my spring garden and I will be growing it every year!! Very tasty and tender, excellent in soups, absolutely effortless to grow! I just pulled the plants on Sunday (June 23, 2020) because they were flowering and were just starting to attract pest pressure from harlequin bugs. I think with light pest patrols this plant could have kept going at least through early summer. Thank you Melissa for sharing such excellent seeds with us!!!" ~ Andi Houston

Nika seriously prefers it over regular kale which is high praise. Dina and Angie also concur, "LOVE that stuff!"

This is not a very commonly available seed although it is being grown at huge scales commercially for its use for jet fuel and other things! Read more about the SPARC Team at UF and their work advancing this crop.

Read about The Kale Trial on our blog! Check out two pictures from the trial here in the catalog.
Product details
  • About 100 seeds
  • 40 days or much less if you eat as a tender baby green.
  • Seeds grown in Working Food gardens at GROW HUB in Gainesville, Florida and at University of Florida's Field and Fork Farm
How to grow

Direct sow or transplant 1/4" deep or less, spaced 10-18" apart. Generally heavy feeders and will always do best in good fertile soil with some occasional organic fertilizers, thick leafy mulch and regular watering if it gets really dry.
How to save seeds

Easy to save seed from but has some tricks to learn. Brassicas within the same species will cross-pollinate if flowering at the same time. Insects love their flowers and so they will easily cross. Isolation distances that prevent cross-pollination are often greater than a home gardener can achieve; about 1/2 mile! This ONLY matters if you are saving seeds and have plants flowering simultaneously. For example, you can have two different varieties of Brassica rapa in the garden, so long as you only let one flower, and harvest the other for eating before they get a chance to bolt and produce their gorgeous yellow blooms. Or....have fun and let them cross and start making your own varieties!

More plants flowering at once produce the best quality seed, 20-80 + recommended. More is always better! So yes, that means we're suggesting growing 80+ plants if you really want to do the best job you can at saving brassica genetics. That said, you can probably get away with far fewer for a couple seasons. But if you start noticing your home-saved seed doesn't produce healthy plants anymore, that's a sign they are struggling with inbreeding and its' time to get fresh seed elsewhere.


Always save from later bolting plants. After flowering and pollination, small green pods will form and continue growing, eventually drying and turning brown. Gather them at this point. If seed pods can mature and dry on the mother plant a long time without being excessively rained on and thus get moldy, this is the ideal situation. If rains threaten your seed, harvest early by removing stems with seeds attached, or the entire plant, and bring indoors to finish maturing and drying.

You may also like