Tastes Like...

Rain on a collard leaf.

A rainy day gives my body a break from the shovel and allows me to blog a bit without feeling guilty.
Late April and the whole month of May are busy times in the garden. Planting is in full swing and everything is sprouting, budding and otherwise getting ready to produce berries, leaves, flowers and so on.

Collard flower bud.

Last fall's kale and collards are still providing us with just enough greens that we don't have to buy greens. But these plants are getting serious about flowering and setting seed. I keep nipping off the flower bud stalks, but they just keep growing more.
I was simply discarding the flower buds, but the other day I paused. Kale, collards and broccoli are essentially the same plant. They are just different cultivars selected for different characteristics, from what I understand of their biology and geneaology. Kale and collard flower buds and flowers look just like broccoli flower buds and flowers, they just grow in much smaller clusters.
Couldn't I just eat these flower stalks I keep cutting back? We eat the greens off of the broccoli, so why not eat the flower buds from the collards? The worst thing is that they wouldn't taste good.

Columbine flowers. Pretty, but can you eat them?

So I cut one and took a nibble.

It tasted like...

Broccoli.

Needless to say, all the other flower bud stalks will go into the basket with the greens.

Collards. Many parts are edible. (For those who remember Euell Gibbons.)