Am I harvesting my kale right?

[budb7]

Hello everyone! I'm new to gardening. I started a little garden of my own. Right now I have mint, jalapeños, kale, cucumber and brussel sprouts. The only veggie I have harvested so far is the kale.

It is a curly kale and I looked online how to harvest. What I found is to harvest the "leaves" when they are about palm size. I started doing that and the kale plant kept growing. Right now it's pretty tall and I am not sure if I am doing it right. I don't know if Kale is supposed to be tall.

I stopped harvesting it because I didn't want it to get so tall it couldn't hold its own.

Should I keep harvesting the leaves only? Or am supposed to chop off the whole top?

 

[Meadowlark]

Congrats on your new garden!

Yes, it sounds like you are doing it right. Never take off the whole top unless you want to kill/stunt the entire plant. Curly kale will continue to grow and produce for you as long as you don't take too much off each time.

Here I grow curly Kale from September to now and it produces all during that time and grows to about 4 feet tall. See attached photo. Don't worry about it falling over because it has an extensive root system as shown. I needed a machete to chop these down recently.

Kale likes relatively cool weather...and Phoenix isn't known for that. I doubt it will survive your summers, but it will live throughout cool temps.

 

[budb7]

Congrats on your new garden!

Yes, it sounds like you are doing it right. Never take off the whole top unless you want to kill/stunt the entire plant. Curly kale will continue to grow and produce for you as long as you don't take too much off each time.

Here I grow curly Kale from September to now and it produces all during that time and grows to about 4 feet tall. See attached photo. Don't worry about it falling over because it has an extensive root system as shown. I needed a machete to chop these down recently.

Kale likes relatively cool weather...and Phoenix isn't known for that. I doubt it will survive your summers, but it will live throughout cool temps.

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Awesome, thank you!! Yeah, we'll see if it survives the summer.