Home » Plants & Animals » Cottage Garden » Revenge of the Purple Cabbage Hater

Revenge of the Purple Cabbage Hater

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

Ornamental kale (Brassica oleracea) is not ornamental. It's ugly as sin. Hideous. An aberration. It should be stopped. And let's call a spade a spade, they're no better than cabbages.

It's fall and so it's time for the attack of what I disparagingly call the "purple cabbages", monstrosities of the plant world. In any other time of year such a genetic purple mistake would be considered a vulgar display of poor taste and would be demoted to compost heap status where it belongs. But this is fall, so do we do that? No. We throw all vestiges of good taste to the wind and plant stupid cabbages. And we give them a fancy name: ornamental kale. And we're in such a state of denial that we think they look good.

If we feel like something ultra fancy is needed we plant not just one but two colors of cabbages - purple ones and yucky yellow ones. Then we can make "clever" patterns in two tones. Winter Wonderland! As if anything that kludgy and clunky could ever be clever. To dress it up even more sometimes we add little blue or yellow violas, too. Or a mixed bag of pansies. Now there's a winning combination! (If you live in Texas or somewhere else with a mild winter, this might be okay. But up in snow country, forgeddabout it!)

Some folks do go to extremes over these "awesome" plants, and to go all out plant the specially mutated non-heads, the frilly ones that look like the caterpillars have already had a field day - the foliage is sort of "feathery" because it's mainly just ribs. Put that in your salad and munch it! (Maybe it tastes better if we call it "mesclun"? Well how about "Kale and Cheese Squares"? In any case, be sure it hasn't been treated with harmful pesticides if you plan on eating it -- and it might not be a good idea to feed it to small children. Here's why I say that even though I am usually a fan of feeding small children not to mention adults as many veggies as possible.)

The copyright of the article Revenge of the Purple Cabbage Hater in Cottage Garden is owned by . Permission to republish Revenge of the Purple Cabbage Hater in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.