Walton's Plant Library

Group/Class:  Ornamental Kale

Brand:  Sakata

Description:

Beautiful compact plants with a tight mounded habit adds a wonderful texture to borders, beds and containers; blue-green, extra curled leaves are blushed with deep red; cold tolerant and slow to bolt

Ornamental Features

Yokohama Red Ornamental Kale is primarily valued in the garden for its interestingly mounded form. Its attractive crinkled round leaves remain bluish-green in color with showy burgundy variegation throughout the season.

This plant is primarily grown as an ornamental, but it's also valued for its edible qualities. The round bitter leaves are most often used in the following ways:

• Fresh Eating
• Eating When Cooked/Prepared
• Cooking

Landscape Attributes

Yokohama Red Ornamental Kale is a dense herbaceous annual with a mounded form. Its medium texture blends into the garden, but can always be balanced by a couple of finer or coarser plants for an effective composition.

This plant will require occasional maintenance and upkeep, and should not require much pruning, except when necessary, such as to remove dieback. It has no significant negative characteristics.

Yokohama Red Ornamental Kale is recommended for the following landscape applications;

• Mass Planting
• General Garden Use
• Container Planting

Planting & Growing

Yokohama Red Ornamental Kale will grow to be about 7 inches tall at maturity, with a spread of 8 inches. When planted in rows, individual plants should be spaced approximately 6 inches apart. This fast-growing vegetable plant is an annual, which means that it will grow for one season in your garden and then die after producing a crop.

This plant should only be grown in full sunlight. It does best in average to evenly moist conditions, but will not tolerate standing water. It may require supplemental watering during periods of drought or extended heat. This plant does not require much in the way of fertilizing once established. It is not particular as to soil pH, but grows best in rich soils. It is somewhat tolerant of urban pollution. Consider applying a thick mulch around the root zone over the growing season to conserve soil moisture. This is a selected variety of a species not originally from North America.

Yokohama Red Ornamental Kale is a fine choice for the garden, but it is also a good selection for planting in outdoor pots and containers. It is often used as a 'filler' in the 'spiller-thriller-filler' container combination, providing a canvas of foliage against which the thriller plants stand out. Note that when growing plants in outdoor containers and baskets, they may require more frequent waterings than they would in the yard or garden.