If you can handle the texture of raw kale then collards probably won't bother you too much.

Collard leaves can get pretty huge, too.

A spell of cool weather (light frost is great, but you probably never come close to it) does tame down the "bitter" to a sweeter tone.

Broccoli Raab (leaf "broccoli") might be worth exploring though the leaves aren't especially large.

Yes like every thing there is a difference in varieties. You have to find one that suits your paricular needs. For me the cabbage collards are more tender than the full leaf varieties like Georgia or Vates. However as a food wrap, you may want to consider cabbage.

How about swiss chard? It grows fairly fast and stays tender until it gets really big and the taste isn't too strong. It'll take frost, too. NT

Swiss chard has the right shape and size but the flavor is a little too distinctive for me. I harvest baby leaves for salad, yum.

Farmerdilla i hadn't heard of cabbage collards before. If i can find a seed source i'll give them a try. Google tells me The Collard Shack in Carolina sells them but doesn't do mail order. Maybe you have a source?

nc-crn you're right, no frost here so i want something that is good without it.

Anyone heard of this Green Zen from Cook's Garden? Looks like another cabbage/mustard hybrid. 30 dtm sounds pretty good!

Here is a link that might be useful: Green Zen

i want to use the leaves to wrap food, in place of a torilla or a piece of rice paper. So the leaf should be of good size but tender and with good or mild flavor.

You definitely want Senposai from Fedco Seeds.

The leaf can get bigger than the picture. Very similar to collards but super tender and delicious. This is a winner for what you are looking for. fedco has the best prices.

It can survive the winter except in real cold areas. I have sensposai plants I seeded in april still producing leaves today.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Morris Heading is an old and readily available "cabbage collard". I've grown rutabagas and kohlrabi for leaves with excellent results. My suggestion would be to try all three and see which you like most. All three can best be grown as a fall/winter crop.

Put 3 or 4 kohlrabi leaves in a bowl, add a large spoonful of tuna salad and a piece of a lightly sweet fruit like pear. It makes a nice lunch dish.

DarJones

Why not use Lettuce? Seems to me most of the greens mentioned are going to be way too tough and strongly flavored. JMO.

Steve

Though most of Hawaii's high temperatures rarely get above 90F even in summer it's lows are generally in the mid-60s/70s year-round.

Chard loves it there. Lettuce can be tricky, especially outside germination from seed. It's far from impossible, just a little touchy.

nc-crn is right although we do get a little cooler than that here due to elevation. i have a chard plant right now that is three years old, the root is enormous and rises up out of the ground. i keep it mostly for curiosity's sake but the leaves are still quite edible. Erbette was mentioned in a thread last fall and i hope to trial it this year.

Steve it would be just like me to overlook the obvious but i think lettuce will be too fragile and the leaves not large enough.

Dar i hadn't even considered kohlrabi but i was going to try some this fall. The purple kind ; ) Thanks for the tip on 'Morris Heading', it looks to be widely available.

GD yes, Senposai rocks. It may be the best answer but i do like to check out all the options. And collards are interesting to me because of their high nutrient density per calorie. Senposai is a hybrid but Fedco sells the OP Senposai Select, don't they? Did you find it to be pretty uniform or has a fair amount of diversity been retained?

Mauirose, last year we tried three additional types of collars (besides the Georgians which are very common and easy to find here). We tried Green glaze which was recommended by a GW member. We also tried Evening Star land collards, and white mountain cabbage collards. The latter produced very little, but the Green Glaze collard were by far our favorite taste wise. We did cook them though. Also, the leaves can be a little smaller than the Georgians and Evening Star land collards. Beautiful shade of green! it is shinier, hence the name glaze I suppose?

The leaves of brussels sprouts have become my favorites for stuffing/rolling, they are sturdy and have a very conducive shape for making rolls. Again, not raw for me though.

Can you grow radicchio in zone 11? We tried a variety last year that I have not been able to find again, palla di fuoco. The outer leaves were large and nice for rolls. I can eat radicchio raw and do not mind the bitterness, but it does bite you back a little. I am trying 4-5 new varieties (to me) of radicchio this fall/spring.

i have not had much luck with radicchio cabrita but then i haven't tried very hard to grow it, either ; )

Did you get the White Mountain cabbage collards through SSE? i notice they were offered in the yearbook last season.

Green Glaze does sound interesting. i understand that the glaze somehow makes the leaves less palatable to insects. But you did not mention that so i wonder if it is true?

Brussel Sprout leaves are edible? I always learn something new from you Cabrita!

One idea - Johnny's has a relatively new cabbage - caraflex - that I tried this year. Very tender, almost sweet. Most cabbage is a bit tough IMO. But I really liked this and am growing it again this fall. I think the leaves would be great for wrapping. I'm planning to try "stuffed" cabbage with these when the heads are ready to harvest this fall!

Cindy

Here is a link that might be useful: Caraflex Cabbage

That is the cutest little cabbage! Did they grow all pointy topped like that for you? Food can be amazing.

Caraflex Cabbage looks like it was derived from the Early Jersy Wakefield another cone shaped mild cabbage I have grown that has very mild leaves. I have used them as wraps for stuffed rolls, but have not tried them raw except for small leaves in salads. I Might try the Carflex It looks good.

Curt

leaves to wrap food, in place of a torilla or a piece of rice paper.

What a great idea, why didn't I think of that before buying nori?

Mustard leaves are good and reseed like weeds. Winterbor kale has a cabbage taste, not bitter. Maybe there is a local Hawaiian plant you could use. Kava is grown in Hawaii, right? Can you buy the rhizomes in stores? I don't know for sure if the leaves are edible. Can you grow ginger, turmeric or banana? Are the leaves edible?

Did your three year old chard produce seeds last year? Can you post a picture? Does it look like this?

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Hi Happyday!

I like the way you think ; ) It's too bad banana leaves aren't edible, they would be perfect! The only tropical plant i can think of with a large, tender leaf is taro. But you don't want to eat taro raw due to the oxalic acid.

My chard plant looks like a giant, overgrown beet. You really want to see it? i'll see if i can get a picture tomorrow. There were three of them but i think i yanked two out a few months ago. None of them flowered which puzzles me since i thought chard was a biennial.

Mauirose, to answer your questions I got all my collard seeds from Southern exposure seed exchange. They did arrive a bit too late for ideal planting time in my climate but wanted to try them anyway. I will try again this season but planting a lot earlier (next month). If you can get the White mountain cabbage collards to grow they are very cute, with a nice white design on the leaves and a little head. Well, it was little for me, perhaps someone else has grown it and could tell us if the leaves would work? Maybe they do better in colder climates?

The Green glaze collards did get eaten a bit but they were slugs mostly. I don't get so many bad insects in our winters, a few aphids that we can take care of. I use herbs as living mulch and this helps a lot with the brassicas and all the different things that want to eat them before we do...LOL. That variety (Green glaze) was smaller and less vigorous than the Georgians, but what a nice flavor! I could *almost* eat it raw. The leaves were still large enough to use as wraps.

Happy, I have a lacinato kale that is looking like your chard! The only one that did not go to seed and over-summered. They start looking like little palm trees after a while.

Yes please, I want to see pictures of Mauirose's chard and Cabrita's kale, now, too!

Mauirose, probably your chard did not seed because it never got a cold period to put it into dormancy.

This summer I planted rainbow chard, and there was a lot of difference in size, some had 4" diameter stems, some 1". I cut them at soil level, cut the leaves off the stem, then set the remaining piece of stem back into the ground to see if it would root over the winter. Works with horseradish.

I've had turnips and rutabagas survive over the winter, never beets, but will see if chard will. Have read that it will not survive a hard freeze, but will try it anyway.

With all due respect, I do not understand all this interest in collards from people in Zones 9-11. It is one of those vegetables that is markedly better after a frost, or stated otherwise, it is mediocre before a frost. Don't you have something tropical to grow? When living in Brazil I had all sorts of quality greens, none of which can be found here, and I could not find collard or kale anywhere. Right now I have tender fava greens, for example, which surely would be available down South in midwinter, and I can not fathom anyone preferring a summer collard to them. Same for radicchio, even more so.

Sorry for the delay Happy, hope you're still interested!

I pulled this one up in April, it's as fat as i remembered

{{gwi:116220}}

The one that is still out there isn't quite as round but it was hard to get the whole thing in the picture. What you see is all one plant.

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{{gwi:116222}}

Glib, believe it or not collards are a popular choice for vegetable gardens here. The nutritional profile, probably, if not the taste ; ) We grow lots of other greens too but most of them either have a small leaf or must be cooked before eating. Wish you could recall the names of the mystery Brazilian greens, hate to think i might be missing out on something!

Here is one, though there were two other greens we were eating frequently: basella rubra, or bertalha.

You could try black seeded simpson lettuce. The leaves are more flexible than a lot of the other lettuce.

It'll grow in San Diego, so it is worth trying in Hawaii.

I've tried to use romaine for roll-ups, but the leaves are too crisp; they don't want to roll.

basella rubra, or bertalha

aka malabar spinach

I'm wanting to grow the red as a semi ornamental in the front to use in making stews.

~dianne

Here is a link that might be useful: Malabar Spinach

Kale and collards do very well in my zone, and it is true, they benefit from a frost (which we are getting already!). I did plant the green glaze collard after our little bit of frosty wheather, and they still tasted good, this is why I mentioned them.

A nice green that does really well in warm weather is amaranth. There are several varieties and some have leaves that are sizable to use as wraps. However, because of the oxalic acid they should be cooked. There is also New Zealand spinach, but the nutritional profile is nowhere that of collards (or kale). So yes, people in z9-11 still want to grow the Brassica oleraceas, because they are the most nutritious! and some of us eat primarily out of our gardens, summer and winter. Or what passes for winter around here. I just call it warm season and cool season gardening.

Mauirose I want some of that chard! Happy, I took my kale out and planted a bunch of onions on that bed, to try to discourage the squirrel. It figured out it (they) like chard! Now they are 'planting' pecans all over my beds to try to store them for the winter, the silly things. Because of them we get pecan 'trees' sprouting all over the place in the spring.

Grape leaves work well for wrapping things to eat. Also some varieties of lettuce work well, particularly Batavia types if you want very large leaves. Good luck!

I eat collards year around.
I like this thread, because it is a "what to eat besides collards thread too.
Some persons use cabbage to hold meat, like a egg roll/ cabbage roll.

I hope we can discuss this more. More variety of collard seeds this year peaks my interest.

Thanks!
DL

I grew up in the south and ate collards a lot, but a'fter moving to Seattle I began growing a variety of smooth leaf Kale called "Premier" variety sold at Ed Hume seed racks. This might easily be considered a collard rather than a kale, there are basically no crinkles on the leaves, which are huge and sort of juicy like collard leaves. The only big difference is that they are not rounded like Collards are. I think this might actually be what people in Brazil and other places call "kale" or "collards" depending on the translator.

For my money, the smooth leaf kale is a lot better than collards for many reasons- it's more tender. It lacks the funky smell associated with cooking collards that has led people to invent household tips for stopping it from stinking the house up. I think it tastes better. If you are dead set on eating collards raw, I think this is a good choice.

Must you use it completely raw for the wraps? Most of the collard wrap recipes I have read mention briefly blanching (or quickly microwaving) the collard leaf before using as a wrap, as well as shaving down the center stem, to make it more pliable. I just learned about collard leaves as a wrap option and am interested to try it!

For stuffing normally you blanch it ; grape leaves, cabbage, lettuce,.. That makes it softer and easy to roll or wrap/ stuff.
There is a difference between wrapping / rolling and stuffing.
I do a lot of stuffing with cabbage, grape leaves bell peppers. You have to simmer/cook after stuffing. This makes the wrapper more tender than if it were raw.

I am curious about collard greens. I live in near Dallas, Tx and so it seems this would not be good for our area? Please advise as I am planting a veg garden this year for the first time in many years.

Gretchen, collard greens should be a great crop for fall and winter harvest in your area. I cook them as a rule. I have tried Georgia, Vates, Champion, and Morris Heading. Georgia is our favorite, but we liked Morris Heading too. Vates was okay. We didn't like the toughness or the strongness of Champion at all. But taste is subjective. Even as cold as this winter has been, the collards have stood under row cover and produced all winter. kale too.