KALE

Kale, simply beautiful, and it tastes great too!

I'm starting the new year with a geourgous Vates Blue Curled Kale.  This variety is most widely chosen to grace the plates of many gourmet eateries, as it's a beautiful decorative variety, and it tastes great!  

If all goes well with this variety, I'll fire up other varieties, like maybe a beautiful Russian Red Kale.

I'm starting early this bright crisp January morning, in my cozy 70 degree hydroponic room.  I have a space on my seed start shelf all ready to go.

The tray, net pots and rockwool are all ready to go, and have been pre soaked for about an hour in my Masterblend Formula for lettuce (10gr/10gr/5gr)

I will be seed starting 9 little 2" net pots with 2 seeds each on Jan 1st, 2014. This particular seed variety has an anticipated 76%- 85% yield rate and my guess it's probably much higher.  So I'll probably have to clip out one sprouted from each.  Because this is my first dealing with this seed and it's source, it's a good way to gauge how to plant the next crop of it!

Germination for this variety is expected to be roughly 5 to 10 days.  However I kind of expect it to be a little faster like my Bibb Lettuce; I had a germination start at around the 3 day mark.  So this will interesting to see.  Again, my room temp is at 70F and about 31% humidity. Sounds pretty cozy to me!

Maturity/Life cycle is estimated at 56 days!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE 1/3/2014

After just 48 hours, I have 9 out of 18 seeds already starting to sprout
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPATE 1/6/2014  I  have 9 out of 18  fully sprouted with a couple more starting..it's hard to tell I this photo.  The Goal this week, will be to separate each plant into it's own net pot and get them into a container. I'll post picture when this is done.

CLICK ON PHOTO TO SEE LARGER VIEW