Grow Enough Kale to Fill Your Harvest Basket

I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can harvest kale from even a small kitchen garden space every single day. One of the reasons leafy greens are so fun to grow is because they grow so much. You can, in fact, get pounds of kale from just a couple kale plants in a very short period of time.

If you're not getting great production from your kale plants, follow these simple steps to tell your plants to start giving you the goods!

The 1st Key to Double Your Kale Harvest

What do you think guarantees that you're going to get more harvests from your kale plants? It might sound obvious, but... harvesting more!

Many of my clients and students are hesitant to cut from their plants, but what happens is the plants either run out of space and get stressed out or they end up directing their energy toward the wrong thing (i.e., not producing more yummy leaves).

I've found over the years that kale plants will produce more if you cut from them more. It might sound counterintuitive, but it's true. The more you harvest from them, the more energy the plants put into producing more leaves. And that's definitely what you want.

Kale leaves are ready to harvest when they're about the size of your hand. Start harvesting the oldest leaves first, from the lowest section of the plant.

But be sure not to harvest too much at one time. A good rule of thumb is never to cut more than a third of the plant in a given week. The reason for this is that the leaves are the food-producing source for the plant. It's the leaf cells that take the sun's energy and turn it into more food for more plant growth. So basically, you want to harvest enough to tell your plant to produce more leaves, but not so much that the plant can't recover. This is why it's nice to have several kale plants so you can rotate which ones you harvest from each week.

Here's more on how to harvest kale.

The 2nd Key to Double Your Kale Harvest

Use garden covers to keep your kale plants happy in extreme temps. Kale thrives in nice, cool weather, but here's the cool thing: Kale is a biennial plant, which means it has to grow for two full years (or at least 18 months) before it can form flowers and produce seeds. That works in our favor. These plants really don't want to die during a hot summer, even though the weather is far from ideal for them. They want to continue growing so they can reach their seed-producing time.

Even so, it's nice for the gardener to give kale plants a helping hand in their survival. If you know the weather is not optimal for them, use covers to prevent them from getting stressed. In hot weather, keep the roots well watered each day and cover the plant with shade cloth, which lowers the temperature around the plants.

You can extend your leaf harvest a bit each winter by covering kale with frost cloth before a hard freeze or snow. If you experience extreme cold, consider growing kale varieties known to be more cold-tolerant. These varieties typically have a savoy (or bumpy) texture to their leaves.

The 3rd Key to Double Your Kale Harvest

This one's simple: Grow more kale.

I admit, I'm a little extra when it comes to planting kale in my garden. You might question my need to grow ten kale plants during every growing season, and your question would be well-founded. In my defense, I use a lot of kale each day in my green smoothies and salads. (I'm also not above sneaking some kale into my kids' berry smoothies. Don't tell them!)

Depending on how much you use kale, consider growing two to three plants per person in your household. That way, you can take a couple leaves from each plant at a time instead of harvesting too much from any one plant. I also recommend trying out different varieties. You might find you like cooking with dinosaur kale but prefer curly kale raw.

The 4th Key to Double Your Kale Harvest

The final key is just to make sure that every kale plant has the other things it needs to stay happy: it's surrounded by well-drained, compost-rich soil; it has access to sunlight; it's not being overcrowded by other plants.

Whenever your kale plants look like they could use a little love, pile some fresh compost around the bases of the plants to give them a nutritional boost and help them feel more supported.

If you're growing your kale in a raised bed filled with good soil, you really don't need to worry about fertilizing kale. Yellowing leaves, however, can be a sign that your plants have a nitrogen deficiency. And nitrogen, as you may know, is the main nutrient that boosts leafy green production. You can add a bit more nitrogen to the plant’s system every two to four weeks. I recommend using only natural ingredients like cottonseed meal, worm castings, or simply extra compost; otherwise, you can burn the leaves.

Read what to do if you find holes on your kale leaves.

Keep the Kale Leaves Coming!

Once your leafy greens get started, it can be hard to keep up with everything that's coming out of the garden. Harvest one leaf, and another one is already growing to replace it. And that should be the case for months to come. You're about to have enough kale to make kale salad, kale chips, kale smoothies—kale everything!

Thanks for being here and making the garden an ordinary part of your life!