How to Grow Kale: The Green That Keeps Giving

GardenDraft Team · July 3, 2026 · 5 min read

Part of: Garden Planning Guides · How to Grow Vegetables — Crop Guides A–Z

Kale earned its reputation honestly: it's about as tough and forgiving as a leafy green gets. It shrugs off cold that flattens other crops, produces for months from a single planting, and actually tastes better after a frost. If you want one green that keeps giving from spring deep into winter, this is it.

A cool-season crop that loves frost

Kale is a brassica, a cousin of broccoli and cabbage, and like them it's built for cool weather. It grows in spring and summer, but it comes into its own in fall: a light frost converts some of the leaf's starch to sugar, so kale harvested after the first cold snaps is noticeably sweeter and less bitter. In mild regions, well-mulched kale can stand and be picked right through winter — one of the few crops that does.

Starting and spacing kale

You can direct-sow kale or set out transplants. For a spring crop, start seeds indoors 4–6 weeks before your last frost and transplant out; for a fall crop, sow in midsummer so plants mature into cooling weather. Give each plant about 18 inches (they get large) in full sun to part shade, in soil enriched with compost. As a leafy brassica, kale appreciates steady nitrogen and even moisture.

Watch for the brassica pests

Kale's main trouble is the cabbage family's usual cast: cabbage worms (the velvety green caterpillars of those white butterflies), aphids tucked in the crinkles, and flea beetles shotholing young leaves. A floating row cover over young plants heads off most of it, and rotating brassicas away from last year's bed (see crop rotation) keeps soil pests from building up.

Pick from the bottom up

Harvest kale like a many-week investment: take the lowest, oldest leaves first, snapping or cutting them off and leaving the growing tip and young center leaves intact. The plant keeps pushing new growth from the top, so one plant feeds you for months. Pick leaves while they're a usable hand-size — older leaves toughen — and a few plants will keep a household in greens far longer than a row of lettuce ever could. Set your sowing dates with the planting calendar.