Sun Valley is offering a year round ornamental kale crop. Although, we kind of like to be fancy and call it by its genus “brassica,” and many folks also call it “cabbage.” Ornamental kale’s popularity has been steadily growing in the floral industry for several years now, and at Sun Valley we have been planting larger and larger crops to supply demand. We are currently offering brassica as a year round item, with perhaps a week gap as the farm production moves from our Oxnard farm, north to Arcata in June.
As you would expect, our kale is in the same scientific class as many edible crops. It is in the mustard family, and is a very close relative to cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts(yuck!). Just to get this information up front, no matter how tasty our Brassica looks, it is not for human or animal consumption…much the way I see Brussels sprouts.
Being at events where we have arrangements and bouquets featuring kale, it almost always manages to steal the show from the lilies, tulips and iris Sun Valley is so well known for. Last month we had a beautiful new lily at a trade show, we had arranged the lilies with some brassica stems to add girth. We ended up spending the day looking on, as interested people literally pushed the lily petals aside to get a closer look at the brassica.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Sun Valley's Flower Talk