Tree Collards (John's babies) are a different breed than Walking Stick Kale and Asturian Tree Cabbage. At this point I have no reason to think that Tree Collards could survive Zone 6, Northeast Oklahoma so I have never grown them. I would try growing them by bringing potted individuals indoors during winter and planting cuttings as annuals each spring if I could easily acquire some cuttings to start out with. Asturian Tree Cabbage should survive nicely here year-round and I am searching for a source of them if anyone has the knowing of such a source.
All 3 of these are Brassica oleracea along with all of your normal cabbages, kales, collards, brussel sprouts, broccolis, cauliflower, kohlrabi.
I would be wary of seed from Johns Tree Collards because they could be crossed with other varieties of Brassicas that were flowering in his garden or even his neighbors garden at the same time as the flowers that produced the seeds. So propagation by cuttings is a must. There is also the concern that these tree collards cant breed true anyway, even if you bred them under controled conditions to avoid contamination. I have heard this is the case. An example is the giant sunflowers I got several years ago. The striped seeds grew into sunflowers with striped seeds. The new striped seeds grew into some sunflowers which had striped seeds, some had dark almost purple hued seeds and some had white seeds. Saving seed is not always a simple operation and when dealing with the brassicas it is quite a challenge to keep all of these different types true and uncrossed. I eat the flower stalks of a 2nd year cabbage just the same as a tight head of broccoli, no big deal. I just keep picking them and new stalks keep coming. Maybe one day we can develop a strain that you can harvest a head cabbge from the first year & then a good head of broccoli from the 2nd year. Or perhaps Brussel sprouts as big as cabbage with a tight broccoli followup.
