How to choose kale seeds

After spending the day putting a sink-full of kale through 6 soaks in salt water before I got to a soak with no worms I decided I needed to avoid the very curliest kale. See first picture. But I'm not sure how to do this next year. Here are my concerns.

1 - I don't remember buying two kinds of kale seeds, and I don't remember what kind I bought. It's possible that I picked up a flat of seedlings. Anyway, I had both kinds of kale in my garden, the very curliest kind, where you can't find the surface of a leaf any more than you can find the bottom of the creases of a chubby baby's neck. Then the kind which is curly only on the edges, with most of the leaf flat. Compare 1st and 2nd pictures. Could one kind of seed produce both very curly and not so curly?

2 - When I Google kale I get different kinds of pictures for what seem like the same kinds of kale. The first two pictures are "blue scotch." The third is dwarf blue vates (doesn't look blue to me...) and "vates blue scotch." The fifth, blue curled organic, looks like it ought to be what I want, but maybe there's a very curly version somewhere for that one too????

Can anyone help?

TIA
LAS

not too familiar with these varieties, but if they are hybrids, the ones that are not growing according to package perhaps could be some that reverted back to the types that were used to breed for the advertised plant? your guess would honestly be as good as mine, there are more knowledgeable people that im sure will chime in after me

Yes there are curly kales and smooth leaf kales and several varieties in between. Dwarf Blue Scotch is one of the oldest curly kales. It is a small plant very dark bluish green leaves tightly curled. Premier is smooth leaf kale which grows somewhat like a small collard. Vates has curly serrations along the leaf edges. You also have Dinosaur kale which have long leaves with a rumpled or blistered appearance. Siberian kale (not really a kale) has leaves that have curly serrations on the leaf edges very much like Vates. You have choices of hybrids in most of the types as well as colors. Semi curly Olympic Red , Roja, Redbor. Hybrids are more consistant than OP, but otherwise not too much advantage. Dwarf Green Curled is similar to Blue Curled except for a lighter green color, more popular in Europe than in North America.

As far as worms are concerned Bt works wonders. And as far discrepancies are concerned, There is not a great deal of effort expended in maintaining pure seed lines of OP vegetables so off types or mixed types are not unusual.

This message was edited Oct 11, 2014 1:52 PM

I always grow one of the red varieties such as Red Winter, Redbor Hybrid, or Red Russian. Like red cabbage, they have higher anti-oxidant levels and all of the varieties I listed have no curl to speak of. The leaves are sort of an exaggerated oak-leaf shape.

We plant Winterbor.
Standard dark green, curled kale.
The plants are tall, growing up to 2-3 ft., with excellent yield and better cold hardiness.
Leaves are well-curled, blue-green, and ruffled.
Vigorous plants will continue growing to produce leaves for successive harvests
as the lower leaves are harvested.

Harvest started in early June & continues now. As in the description we harvest lower leaves.
No problem with worms.

After I posted this message I remembered that last year it was really hard to find either kale seeds or seedlings. I think Burpee had a message about a crop failure, although they had several unusual kinds. So I asked all my friends to snap up any they found, and I found 1 lonely little flat (6 plants) at Home Depot. So that accounts for the variety. I think I'll go for Vates next spring, based on Farmerdill's post. I'll try Siberian if I see it. This year Burpee has one I've not heard of, called Premier, but it looks worth trying. Interestingly, when I clicked "Save picture as" the resulting .png file was empty. I guess they've found a way to prevent folks from using their pictures.

Also, I've now discovered that if I time my application of bacillus thurengiensis to 3 or 4 days before a harvest, I'll have almost no little cabbage worms. Previously I'd waited a couple of days after the arrival of the white butterflies, and that wasn't optimum unless I happened to be harvesting 3 or 4 days later.

Thanks to all!

Johnny's has Wintermor again after New Year.
Harvested again today. It would go forever if there was no winter!

No picture of Kale, so have to settle for our kitten, Rufuis.