This year I'm pushing nutrition to my market customers. I've discovered that kale is a superfood, and will be featuring it prominently at market. I am marketing towards a customer base of mostly retirees, many of whom have shown some interest in healthy eating, and will be making up some "point of sale" type posters regarding kale.

The jist of it is that I have found that kale is the leafy vegetable highest in carotene and lutein, two phytonutrients which act as antioxidants tyo generally protect against aging, cancer, and degenerative diseases, and macular degeneration.

Specifically, recent research from the Unive. of New Hampshire has identified a variety of kale which has more than twice the levels of both these nutrients, compared to kost other varieties.

Here is a link to their paper(in .pdf format)

http://luteinlab.unh.edu/hortsciencekalecarotenoidpaper.pdf

The variety is called "Cavolo nero", or "Toscano" kale, which is an Italian variety also known as "dinosaur kale", because it is different in appearance from standard types. below is a link with a description and photo.

I'd like to know if anyone here has grown this variety, and if so, could you give me any details about it's culture

relative to standard recomendations. Things like:

-do you start transplants early, or direct seed?

-how close can plants be spaced?

-how high can these plants get?

-how productive is this variety?

Here is a link that might be useful: