Kale, the humble cottars’ fare, has made a comeback. And so it should. This new favourite boasts many varieties, shapes and taste, as well as elegantly gracing any border.

It’s well known that brassicas are hard to grow. They insist on fertile soil, lots of space which they occupy for many months. And they require a fair dose of TLC: protection from cabbage rootfly, cabbage whites, slugs and aphids. Cabbages and caulis aren’t particularly beautiful, provide food for only one meal and leave a large, vacant spot once harvested.

I always use cabbage collars to ward off rootfly, but, apart from during plague years like this one, I find cabbage whites rarely attack kale. Instead of hearting up like cabbages, this leaf crop needs much less feed and tolerates quite close neighbours.

As one of the biggest selling points for gardeners, kale not only looks stunning, but, as a mature plant, it crops and occupies a piece of ground from August right through till April. During the winter, when a bed can look pretty tired, this fine plant continues to look good.

With any planting, I always stress the importance of leaf shape, colour and texture and the beauty about kale is that it offers all three. Green curled kale varieties range in colour from pale green to deeper blue-green and the tightly curled edges contrast nicely with more usually flat leaves.

The Cavolo Nero varieties, including the original Nero di Toscana, are also curled, but produce long, dark, elegantly slim stems. They burst out like a brimming coronet from short stalks, rather than neatly ordered sideshoots.

Until this year, my undoubted favourite kale was Ragged Jack, which is identical to Red Russian. This 75cm specimen has striking serrated bluish crimson leaves with red stalks.

Ragged Jack survives any winter providing an excellent spring picking. On the other hand, Nero di Toscana, long cultivated in Italy, may succumb to a harsh spell. Ideally, select varieties with guaranteed succession in mind.

And with all this popularity, breeders are constantly developing new varieties and even crossing kale with other brassicas. One example of this is the flower sprout, a cross between kale and sprouts. They’re not always genetically stable, so you’ll have a mix of greener or redder plants.

I’ve also noticed this colour variation in one of the most recent cultivars, Emerald Ice, my ‘Kale of the Year’. The clean white of its stalks almost imperceptibly encroaches on the frilly edged leaves, with stunning effect.

Emerald Ice turns traditional prejudice against brassicas on its head. Any survivors of school dinner cabbages boiled to a flaccid tasteless heap were undoubtedly put off the brassica tribe for life. And astonishingly, the same water torture can still be meted out to hapless caulis and sprouts.

Emerald Ice is too tasty for that treatment. The tender young leaves, close to the heart of the plant, are the tastiest. The white young stalks can even be eaten raw, much as you would with celery. And again, I’ve found they make excellent dips into mixture of cream cheese and Dijon mustard.

The pattern of each of the leaflets is so attractive, it’s worth taking an extra couple of minutes to tear them off individually rather than simply shredding the lot. They can then be stir fried, steamed or braised; this also works well with the fully grown leaves.

These more modern ways of preparing brassicas retain the plants’ health-giving properties and it’s suggested that adding mustard while cooking enhances these nutritional benefits. Whatever your cooking method, it does seem dreadful to pour all the nutrients the sink.

Plant of the Week

Betula medwedewii Gold Bark. A compact Caucasian birch tree with shiny, silvery bark, flushed with gold; has foliage that turns a rich, tawny gold.