Why it's always good to fact check...

And why it's good to get your news and information from more than one source, just in case that info is incorrect:

This article popped up in my news feed today. (I'm assuming I don't need to explain to this audience why this has me shaking my head.)

My chickens would say, "right now - give it over" and not care that it's cabbage and not kale. They're happy to hoover whichever's on offer!

Agreed. There are many citizen bloggers who know absolutely nothing about the topic at hand. I recently came across a site that said a crockpot draws 4.5 watts. So if you started your stew in 1975, it should be just about ready. Phew.

Is it just me or are the news feed publications just absolutely brainless? I am bombarded with them, and they are all super predictable:

How to make/grow/cook something (example: best fertilizer for your lemon tree)
-endless background:
three paragraphs defining what a tree is. Mmkay.
complete history of all lemons, range, full wikipedia entry...
what famous persons were spotted with lemons, Queen Elizabeth's special opinion about lemons...
-long description of spurious health benefits of lemons (they cure cellulite!!)
-approximately 10 totally generic vague words about the ostensible title. ("Like all plants, lemons like regular watering and sunlight, and a 10-10-10 fertilizer every three months! Happy growing!")

I keep blocking articles from these sources, but they seem to proliferate. What a waste of time!!!

I have a nice shiny book on self sufficiency and in there there is a picture of swiss chard labeled as rhubarb. it's the worst book I have seen full of mistakes on things I know about so I wouldn't trust it at all on things I don't know about.

And then there is fake news and social media.

"I saw it on the internet so this must be true"


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Hi Teresa,

Back in around 1972 I ran into a guy who wrote romance novels.  His pen name sounded female. He had a huge 3 ring binder ( before the days home computers were common) that described chapter by chapter, scene by scene what was to happen.  Yes, his books had different settings.....and different characters, but if you read one ....you read them all.  His books didn’t sell great, but they paid his way through college.  

As for the Op, my favorite was when Roy Orbison died.   The person on the news credited him with a Gene Pitney record.

I'll try to take the load here for those that might be scratching their head at the original post because they are just starting gardening research, or just confused by it.

Maybe I'm missing something? I always feel like things go over my head?

Well, most here probably are of a deeper experience level with vegetables, but I'm sure a lot of very new people come here to learn, too.

I'm somewhere in the middle :)

So, first thing I would have to say is that I've never seen Kale that looks like a head a of cabbage...but I've never seen cabbage that looks curly and fuffly kind of like Kale?? SO whatever that thing is...I don't know.

Next thing, from my experience, is that Kale is ready to harvest whenever you want Kale and the plant looks like it's got enough leaves of the right size you want to eat. It's nice to leave some leaves (especially the grow point) if you want it to keep producing. The variety you choose plays a part in all that, too.

Chinese Kale: Some varieties appear to head. Kale is called wild cabbage in some circles. Regional descriptions come into play. Leaf lettuce vs heads of lettuce.

Cole Tyler wrote:

.but I've never seen cabbage that looks curly and fuffly kind of like Kale?? SO whatever that thing is...I don't know.

Yummmm.... Savoy cabbage - one of my favorite varieties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savoy_cabbage

https://www.thekitchn.com/know-your-cabbages-green-red-s-112856

Years ago, I would have said that my ducks preferred kale leaves, and my chickens preferred cabbage leaves. They seem to have cross-pollinated and now they'll cheerfully swipe either if given the opportunity.

I have seen some loose leaf Cabbage that might be confused with kale in its early development.  I have never seen any kale  that could be confused with a cabbage head.

Waaaay too many sites are just "ad distribution systems" these days with generic topics full of search engine optimization and no real content. For a while I made a shortcut to google that included a bunch of '-site:spammerblog.com' entries, so my searches would remove any hits from those sites, and I would add my normal search phrase at the beginning to avoid the copy-paste ad sites.

Recipe blogs are pretty tedious too, the more polite sites have a link at the top to 'jump to recipe'. If not I might Ctrl-F and type 1/2 to see if that jumps down to the ingredient list, otherwise there are thousands of other sites out there and at least half are copy/pastes of each other.

In a previous life, I taught the blind and visually impaired how to use computers, right when the internet was taking off and Netscape was used to sign into AOL and the like. It was tough enough back then when pages were simple enough, but now there are so many layers piled on I can only hope the reading software has kept up.

On the other hand, https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ is a solar powered, very low bandwidth site with a lot of good info (so data friendly for those of us with limited data plans on phones). It even has an offline reading option. It makes me want to accumulate an equivalent pile of useful data, like recipes without all the MBs of fluff, into a simple to access format that will never include third party garbage.

I still find it fascinating that kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, collards, cauliflower, etc. are all the same species, Brassica oleracea.



Now, if I could just pronounce "oleracea."

Jay is right, the vegetable in the OP's (Original Poster) post is Savoy Cabbage.


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I have never seen kale that makes a head:


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George Yacus wrote:I still find it fascinating that kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, collards, cauliflower, etc. are all the same species, Brassica oleracea.



Now, if I could just pronounce "oleracea."

It makes it difficult if one tries to crop rotate. I find myself sticking brassicas everywhere, plus I let my kale self seed so it pops up in all the cracks.

Speaking of crop rotation, I read someone's article about crop rotation where they didn't understand the concept of plant families; for example, I don't remember the exact plants they said but it was something like this... they planned on planting tomatoes and broccoli in one bed and peppers and cabbage in another bed and potatoes in a third and that they were going to rotate those specific plants every year and this avoid pests and disease. This same article described the bumper crop of corn they were planning from planting a single stalk of corn in each of 8 pots and then placing those pots in decorative locations throughout the garden. What made it really crazy was not that a 1st year gardener made these mistakes. I made some silly mistakes the first few years I had a garden. What was silly was that the whole article was sponsored in part by a garden nursery who helped her plan the whole garden and were the ones who taught her about garden rotation. 🤦

For newbies gardeners, tomatoes, potatoes and peppers are all part of the same family (nightshade) and shares pests and disease. Cabbage and broccoli are the same. So if you want to crop rotate, you should plant all the nightshades in one bed and all the brassicas in another and a third family, like carrots and parsley in another, etc. Then you switch each family to a new location each year and don't return to the original location for at least three years. Though another method is to interplant everything so that pests and disease have a harder time spreading between individual plants.

Right on que, I was contacted today from my insurance company that found out, through an internet source, that my wife and I are not married.  I will see if they are willing to fund my legal action against the county that issued the fraudulent marriage certificate that is hanging on my wall.

Wow John F, that is the most bizarro thing ever. WTF??

Hi Douglas,

Just to be clear, the marriage certificate is quite real.  The insurance company is off base..... and am not talking about the local agency.  This is from the corporate headquarters.