If you’re new to seed saving, kale is a good seed to learn how to save in seven easy steps! We’ve also included a few kale recipes – even our simple kale chips – and answered some basic questions about kale seeds.
If saving seeds is your thing, try doing it with friends! Be sure to read the Seed Swap section of our book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. Don’t have your own copy? Click below to see what it’s about! If you’d like to read a sample from the book, just email me at Tessa@homesteadlady.com. Be sure to let me know it’s the Seed Swap section you’re interested in. With eight chapters of homesteading how-to’s and over 400 pages of homesteading information, there’s bound to be a lot that will interest you!
Why Plant Kale?
Kale is a simple and nutritious green to grow in the garden. It is rarely bothered too much by garden pests and is hardy in cold weather. Kale also sets seed VERY easily, making it an easy seed save even in the children’s garden.
Kale is also very versatile in recipes. You can saute it or eat it raw in salads. Because it is a cole crop like broccoli, I find it best to at least temper raw kale with lemon juice which softens it a bit.
—>>>Click here to get our recipe for Raw Kale Salad with lemon juice for softening and flavoring<<<—
Make Kale Chips
Kale makes a good vegetable chip, if you’re following a Paleo or Keto diet. To make kale chips:
- Washed a bowl full of chopped kale.
- Toss in enough cold pressed olive oil to coat the leaves.
- Add a dash of sea salt and a bit of cayenne and mix together.
- Lay the kale out evenly without touching on dehydrator racks .
- Dehydrate on the living foods setting (around 105F/41C) to make an incredible raw kale chip.
Bon Appetit has a concise article on the various kind of kale to consider for different recipes.
Are Kale Seeds Edible?
Edible, yes. Palatable, meh. With kale plant, the leaves are the most used part. The stalks can go to your livestock, but don’t overfeed them or they will struggle with gas and bloating.
If you’d like to try frying up a seed pod, try radish seed pods instead. Fried radish seed pods are peppery like mustard seeds.
Is Kale Easy to Grow from Seed?
Yes!
Kale is a biennial, meaning it needs two years to fully complete it’s life cycle. Most people grow it only as an annual, but to save the seed, simply leave it in your garden to over-winter.
Kale is very cold hardy
Pests rarely ultimately destroy kale. When things are in balance, you may not even notice bad bugs on your plants, except maybe some aphids. We had once year when Brassica moths ate every single leaf on my plants but, after they moved on with the season, the kale plants bounced right back with new growth. These plants are amazing!
—>>>Click here to read The Ultimate Guide to Growing Kale by Schneider Peeps.<<<—
What Kind of Kale Seed to Save?
All the kales create seed in the same way, so you can save seed easily from any of them.
If you have two or more varieties planted and they flower at the same time, be prepared for a little cross breeding. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing – you might become famous for your kale original seed! If you don’t want to cross varieties, plant one variety this year and another variety next year.
- Last fall, I planted Vates and Red Russian kale, from which we harvested leaves throughout the fall and into the winter.
- Seeds for Generations carries a Lacinato kale that can trace its origins to Tuscany – mangia! Click here to see its seed profile on their site.
For some notoriety, try growing the walking stick kale featured in the Giant’s Garden section of Sharon Lovejoy’s children’s gardening book, Roots, Boots, Buckets and Shoots. This kale grows several feet tall and has a very straight stem which can, in reality, be turned into a walking stick.
In short, all kale is worthwhile and you should try them all.
Saving Kale Seed
Being a member of the Brassica family (broccoli, cabbage, etc.), kale is very much obliged to set seed for you, especially once the spring weather warms to summer.
How Long from Seed to Seed?
As I said, kale is a biennial so it will require two years to set seed. This can be an imposition with some plants because they take up space in the garden for two years. However, with kale, you can keep harvesting the leaves the whole time.
Once the flower/seed stalks shoot up in the second year, the flavor of the leaves can change, FYI. I don’t like to eat it raw at that point, but it’s still yummy in soups. Regardless, it’s exciting to see the flowers bloom since I know that the seed is coming! This is the easiest seed save of my gardening year and I love it.
In fact, kale seed is so simple to save that it’s perfect for new seed savers and even kids. If you have a children’s garden, be sure to have them plant kale one spring and harvest seed in the summer or fall of the following year. If you don’t have a children’s garden, please read this.
What Happens When Kale Goes to Seed?
Each plant will send up flowering stalks that can get quite tall. Our tallest this year measured somewhere between a three and a five-year-old child.
The stalks are a bit brittle and in high wind will detach from the mother plant. Sadly, this can happen before the seed has time to mature. If you’ve got stalks breaking off, tie up the stalks around a stake of bamboo for support.
The Seed Pods
Once the green seed pods (which look like small, skinny green beans) have fattened up and started to dry out, move fast to get the seed preserved. If you wait, the seed will drop anywhere it pleases to reseed itself in your yard. Sometimes your neighbor’s yard, if the birds or wind get involved.
The Seed Saving Process
- Once the seed pods are ripe and beginning to dry out, cut the stalks at the bottom of the plant.
- Then, invert them into a large paper bag and wait for them to dry the rest of the way.
- Hang the paper bags (paper is best because it breathes) some place where they won’t get too hot and won’t be exposed to dust or wind.
- If you’re in a place prone to summer humidity, just do a few stalks per bag so that you don’t end up with mold.
- Once you feel like the pods have finished drying, flail (or bang) the stalks against the side of the bag to dislodge the seeds.
- Toss the dried stalks into your compost or see if your goats will eat them. (Be prudent with raw Brassicas fed to your ruminants as too much can cause bloat – the dried stalks should be fine.)
- Start winnowing out the chaff by dumping the contents of your bag either through a screen or onto a sheet.
Kale seeds are small, dark and round. They are usually easy to distinguish in the midst of all the dried out seed casings and aphid corpses that will also be in residence at the bottom of the brown paper bag.
More on Winnowing Seed
The word “winnow” means to clean away all the chaff (seed casings and gunk) from your seed.
To filter the seeds from the chaff you can use window screening, a mesh strainer, a colander or a very loose weave cheese cloth. Really anything that will allow the small seed to fall through, but trap the larger particles of “stuff” will work just fine.
You can also just dump them onto a white sheet and call seed cleaning a Family Night activity!
To see the process of this (although it’s with leek seeds), click here.
A Special Note on Aphids
Aphids can be a nuisance on Brassicas but they don’t usually harm the seed. They can easily be controlled with a strong jet of water from your hose. With soft-bodied, plant-killing insects, a few hours away from their food source and they die.
Even if you harvest your seed stocks with a few aphids, they wont live long enough to do any damage to the seed, even if they could.
Learn more garden tricks and keep great notes on your garden each year with The Gardening Journal – just click below to learn more.
How to Store Kale Seed
How much kale seed do you get? That entirely depends on how many seed stocks your plant sends up and how much seed you take time to save. We’ve saved hundreds of seed from one plant.
Needless to say, you will probably have enough for most backyard gardening purposes.
You will have copious amounts of seed so make sure you have paper envelopes and/or glass jars handy to store and label the seed. I like paper envelopes for ease of storage, but prefer jelly jars with lids for ease of sorting, identifying and using. I use both since I can’t commit fully to either method.
Ideally, you would be taking generous seed samples from multiple of the best plants you have in order to preserve beautiful biodiversity. If you’re like me, you’ll just thank your lucky stars that you remembered to save out even one or two plants for seeds as you ravenously consumed every kale leaf in sight the season before.
Random Seed Saving Notes
Seed saving is something I’m still learning to do even after several years of practice. It’s also one more thing to factor into the planning of the garden each year. Much like a plant, sometimes I thrive and sometimes my brain wilts.
- Like I said, kale will cross pollinate with other brassicas and, therefore, with itself. My Vates flowered later than my Red Russian so I’m hoping I didn’t cross too badly, if at all.
- As far as the varieties go, of the two, I liked the Vates the best. Vates has great flavor, tidy leaves, not too much curling/ruffling, is hardy and pretty.
- The Red Russian was also very hardy and had lovely red undertones. However, it wasn’t quite as good in salads because it’s a little on the tough side when raw. I’m saving the seed, though, because in stir fries and soups it was yummy. The Scotch is a great one, too, and so is the Dinosaur kale. Basically, I haven’t met a kale I didn’t like.
What Seed Are You Saving?
So what seed are you saving this year? If the thought of doing any seed saving is new to you, don’t worry, that’s why God invented next year.
If you’re entirely new to gardening or still getting your feet wet, I highly recommend the two different levels of gardening in our book The Do It Yourself Homestead. With 400 pages of homesteading information, including gardening (of course), all presented in four different levels of experience, you’re bound to find something helpful to you! But don’t just take my word for it – here’s what fellow garden nerd and author Chris MacLaughlin has to say:
The cover photo of the kale plant is gratefully attributed to this Wikimedia Commons user; the cover photo of the kale flower is gratefully attributed to this Wikimedia Commons user.
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We saved artichoke, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and something else I can’t remember right now.
Remember, you guys are always welcome to any swaps we have up here in Salt Lake county!
Great post! I’ve never saved kale seeds before and will reference this when our kale blooms this winter!
We have grown blue curled vates in st Louis Missouri area for many years. After starting seeds indoors in the late winter, then planting the plants in early to mid April, we pick kale all summer and fall and often into the winter. Plants that are not completely consumed by us are usually left until the garden is tilled in the Spring. We have two kale plants in the garden right now, with NO seed pods. They are healthy, and the leaves look ‘ok’…not perfect. Should I leave them in, this year, to see if they form seed pods?
I HAVE NEVER HAD ANY KALE PLANTS FORM SEED PODS!!!!!!!!!!
WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO PROMOTE SEED FORMATION.
THANKS FOR ANY ADVICE……………..JWL
What a great question, Wayne! Thank you for alerting me to the fact that I hadn’t explained that part well enough – I’ll amend the post to have this information.
Yes, leave your kale plants in the garden this year. Kale is a biennial, meaning it needs two years to fully complete it’s life cycle. Most people grow it only as an annual, though, because not everyone is thinking about saving seed. This spring, you can harvest some of the leaves of your year old plants, but they’ll send up stocks this year with lovely flowers. Leave them and let them set seed which you can harvest this fall – the seeds are round and black, like any Brassica. Keep an eye on the pods because the plant will set A LOT of seed and it will reseed itself if you don’t get to the seed collection in time. I harvest seed and let some drop, that way I don’t have to plant, if I don’t want to and the plants come up when they’re ready the next spring. Our zone 5 winters don’t bother kale and, if covered, I can pretty much harvest mine year round – even if my leaves freeze, they usually thaw when picked just fine. I love kale for so many reasons but cold heartiness is certainly one of them.
Did that answer your question? So glad you asked it!
I have a question. I’ve been harvesting the seed pods from my kale, and yesterday when I was opening them, some had little worms or some sort of larva that seems to eat into the seed. Any ideas what they could be?
Probably some sort of cabbage moth since kale is in the cabbage family. If the seeds aren’t damaged, you can put them in the freezer to kill the bugs and then shuck them/clean them up. If you have seeds that don’t have the bugs, just save those and give the buggy ones to the chickens, if you have them.
It’s raining pretty hard & I forgot to harvest the seed pods already – any way I can dry them out inside still or is it too late?
It’s never too late, Joey! Cut the seed stalks, bring them in and let them either dry hanging upside down or on a screen. Put something underneath so catch any falling seed. If you live in a humid area, place a fan on low nearby and have it oscillate. Good luck!
My kale (first year) is seeding but about 30% of the seed pods have gone brown and have ripped ends, perhaps some sort of disease?
I wish I could send you a photo. The rest are still green
That is super weird, James! The early drying might be due to simple water reduction or heat of summer, but the ripped ends? If it were some other plant like beans, I might suspect raccoons or squirrels of pilfering your seed harvest. But kale seeds don’t seem like they’d be tasty to me.
Do you have a local extension office you can take them to? You could even just snap a photo and email it to them for their best guess. If you figure it out, let me know what that turns out to be!
What should I do with the plant after I cut the seeds stalks off? Will it grow back or is it done?
Great question! Kale is a biennial, which means that it has a two year life cycle. So, as long as it can survive your winters, it should keep producing leaves for a time. How long is really plant-dependent – my red Russian kale never leafs as long as Vates. They grow in the same conditions, but Vates is really hardy and just keep on chugging along. Kale will re-seed, too – so it will drop seed and baby kale plants will come up in time. Feel free to pull mother plants once they get mangy, or when the leaves turn bitter or tough.
My husband thought two plants were weeds and pulled them while making our garden. Our landlord got upset and said they took years to grow seeds and is charging us $500 to replace them. TWO. What are they worth? Thanks
I’m so sorry your having trouble but I’m afraid I can’t be of help to you. I suggest you contact a local nursery and your lawyer. Good luck!
What can I do to prevent birds from eating the seeds before I get to them? I was thinking bird netting. The birds are voracious and any seed that ripens is hobbled up quickly! I have to be steadfast to make sure I catch them before they are eaten but at the same time they are only ripening very slowly. I wish I could pick them whilst green and dry inside!!! Thanks !
Great question! Birds can be a pain, even though we love them.
Bird netting would work if you’d like to put a frame around the entire plant. An open weave cheese cloth will work if you want to encase only the seed stalk. Take a wire hanger (or any other sturdy but pliable wire) and form it into a light bulb shape. Using florist tape or garden, place the wire frame over the seed stalk and then hang the cheese cloth over the frame and secure it. This will keep the cheese cloth from sticking to the seed stalk in the rain and possibly damaging the seeds as they mature.
Great article. Should I freeze my kale seeds? What’s the best way to store them long-term? Thanks
So glad it was helpful! You can put your seeds in the freezer to extend their shelf life, but they don’t require cold to germinate. The freezer is the best place to keep them longest. After that, a cool, dark room is great – it should be dry, too.
Let me know if you grow some this year!
So, it says that you can pick leaves as you go and it will still go to seed next year. Then at the end it says that you ravenously picked all the leaves and you don’t have any going to seed. Where is the line? This is my first time growing kale, we had a failure and somehow one came back up spring 2019. It’s lasted all year and we’ve only harvested once off it in January. I really want to get a bunch of seeds off of it because it has been an inspiring and amazing plant. How it just showed up when I turned over the soil in the spring for actually the four sisters and it had not come up from the winter before and it’s lasted this whole time and tastes so good just blows our mind. It’s like our best plant friend right now. I definitely want to incorporate those genetics into future seedlines. If we harvested it though, or continue to harvest it… even a little bit, will it not go to seed?
If I understand you correctly, you have the one plant from which you’d like to save seed? So, this spring will be it’s second year? If the plant is leafing well this spring and summer, feel free to pick up to 1/3 of the plant. The second year leaves may not be as tender or tasty since the plant will be focusing its energy on producing seed this year.
Did I answer your question, or did I miss the mark? Let me know if I can help with anything else!
We have about 8 kale plants we let go to seed this spring after eating their leaves all winter long. My kids made the discovery that the new kale pods are delicious, raw or cooked. Eat them while they are green and tender. Like a broccoli flavored green bean.
What a great tip – thank you for sharing!
after harvesting white Russian Kale seeds, I noticed that some are reddish brown others are black. I assume that the reddish ones are immature, but WILL they germinate anyway?
Great question! Actually, as long as you harvested them at the same time from the same seed head, they should be just fine. Unless you observe any kind of mold or other surface issue with the seeds, they’re most likely perfectly viable.
Seeds are like children, they’re all basically the same but with minor variations now and then. Sometimes that’s are reflection of development – for example, there was a temperature spike and one seed turned red while its brother stayed black. Sometimes one seed is stronger than the other because it gets more nutrients for whatever reason – that’s why you can end up with small and large seeds from the same pumpkin.
Usually, though, both the seeds will sprout and produce fruit. Good for you for saving seed! Go right ahead and plant what you’ve saved and then just observe how they grow and produce. Continue to only save seed from the strongest, healthiest, best fruiting plants in your garden.