Things You'll Need:
- Collard green seeds
- Garden space for growing the collard greens
- 10-20-10 Garden fertilizer
- Soil – rich, light sandy loam, pH .5.5 to 6.8
- Small garden shovel
- Small garden rake
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Step 1
Select a collard green variety. Champion, Georgia, Vates and Flash are all commonly recommended collard varieties, each having their own growth habits and leaf size, color and texture.
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Step 2
Prepare the seed bed. Your collard greens will grow best in a light, rich, sandy loam soil with a pH of 5.5 to 6.8. Cultivate the soil thoroughly and deeply (at least 10 inches) since collard roots will grow as much as 2 feet deep. Form the soil into raised rows about 8 inches high and 3 feet apart.
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Step 3
Sprinkle the tops of the planting rows with a 10-20-10 garden fertilizer. Use your garden rake to mix the fertilizer into the top 4 inches of the soil.
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Step 4
Sow the collard green seeds in early spring for a summer harvest, or in mid summer for a late autumn harvest. Spread the seeds evenly along the top of each row of the seed bed. Ultimately your collard plants will be 18 inches apart, but collard seeds are small and hard to dispense evenly, so spread the collard seeds a little more densely; you will thin them later. Cover the seeds with ½ inch of soil.
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Step 5
Water the planted collard seeds by sprinkling, so as not to disturb the covered seeds. Keep the seed bed slightly moist until germination. The seeds will germinate in 6 to 12 days.
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Step 6
Continue to water the collards evenly, about 1.5 inches of water every seven to ten days. Drip irrigation works well for home gardens.
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Step 7
Thin the seedlings to 6 inches apart when they are about 2 inches tall.
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Step 8
Pull weeds from the collard green bed regularly throughout the growing season.
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Step 9
Fertilize the collard greens again with a 10-20-10 garden fertilizer if you notice that the plants begin to look pale.
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Step 10
Thin the plants again, to 18 inches apart, when leaves of adjacent plants touch. The young harvested plants are good for eating or may be transplanted to another area of the garden.
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Step 11
Harvest the collard greens continuously by cutting the outer leaves when they are about 12 inches tall, leaving the inner three layers of leaves to continue growing. Or harvest the entire plant at the end of the growing season; in this case the tough outer leaves will not be good for eating, so discard them. In frost free climates or climates that have only light frost, collards may produce throughout the entire winter.














Comments
1antonia said
on 11/17/2009 Hello Yalondad, I have found that any cabbage related plants will grow to seed after flowering,..so unless u wish to collect seeds, best to pull them out.Greetings from "down under"
yalondad said
on 10/18/2009 Just wondering if collards are perennial plants? I'm not sure if I need to pull them in the late fall/winter or if they will come back in the spring automatically.
naturenut said
on 7/15/2009 Great tips on growing collard greens.