Your Quick Guide to Collards by Dr. Mark W. Farnham

In this episode, host LuAnna is joined by again by collard expert Ira Wallace of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Their conversation centers on Dr. Mark Farnham’s piece,Your Quick Guide to Collards, which gives a technical breakdown of the vast genetic diversity within the Southern staple. The discussion explores the rich world of heirloom varieties, from the yellow-green cabbage collards of the Carolinas to the striking Alabama Blue, and tall multi-season tree collards.

NOTE: This episode was recorded June 24, 2025.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Crop Stories Podcast, where we bring the pages of the Utopian Seed Project's Crop Stories publication to life. Based here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, we're on a mission to strengthen our food system through the power of agrobiodiversity and the relationships that sustain it. Our Crop Stories program helps achieve these goals by connecting people to specific crops and their stories. If you believe in a more resilient, storyful future, consider supporting us as a monthly donor. You'll find the details in the show notes. And again, welcome to the Crop Stories Podcast. I'm Luanna and I'm so glad you're here. And again, to listen to our third Crop Stories Podcast episode. This podcast season will kind of act as our audio companion to Utopian Sea Projects Crop Stories Collards publication. Thank you, Miss Ira, for being here with me today as our resident collard expert. How are things going for you and y'all um at the farm? How's how's the collards?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Have they been impacted by the heat at all or well they we're watering a lot. So uh the bugs are, you know, after the month so forth, and it's time for us to start new fall ones. We we do uh three plantings uh and to catch whatever weather is just right for our fall ones to start. So uh in July uh toward the middle to the end, we do one and we do one beginning of August and uh another uh about the third week in August. And one of them is so much better than the others. You never know which one is gonna be. Some people uh can have good success uh planning in September. Go figure.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, that sounds really exciting, yeah. Um we're we're getting ready to start ours too in July, and it's an exciting time, you know. The it feels like you're getting two almost two crops out of one season almost or something. Like it's a fun thing to work with brassicas because you can kind of do it twice in one year instead of you know really just honing in on it once in a year.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Well, that's really exciting. Um, it's cool to hear how the collar patch is doing, um, considering that's what we're chatting about. As you know, we're gonna be focusing on Mark Farnum's piece titled Your Quick Guide to Collards. Um and I'm really excited to reef this one with you. It feels like there's I don't know, it's different from the other ones we've read so far, which is cool. You know, we have each one is about collards, but yet all of our discussions are so different. Um, so I'm excited to hear what we chat about today. Should we get started and listen to Mark's peace? Okay, sounds good.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Southern greens, according to the USDA, include collards, kale, mustard greens, and turnip greens. In their book, Collards, a southern tradition from seed to table, doctors Ed Davis and John Morgan support this definition, reporting that collards, along with mustard and turnip greens, are the top three traditionally cooked greens in the region. Within each of those crops, there is a huge amount of diversity, but that diversity remains largely unknown and underappreciated beyond specialty farmers and seed saving circles. The commercial collard crop is represented by just a few cultivars, and there is very little variation among them. Typical supermarket collards are described as bunching collards because when they are harvested, single plants are cut whole and tied together in bunches. Their leaves can vary in color from a deep green to blue green, but are generally smooth, large, and oval shaped, with prominent petioles, the petiole being the stalk that joins the leaf to the stem. The most widely grown cultivar is called top bunch, and it produces a plant with mostly upright leaves that bunch well when harvested. Beyond the commercial collard, there's a substantial variation among heirloom collards that have been grown and perpetuated by numerous farmers and gardeners in the southeastern states. You can learn more about these varieties at the website heirloomcollards.org. These heirloom collards are often classified or labeled by the seedsavers who maintain them with names that describe their general type. The groupings primarily focus on plant habits, leaf characteristics, and other observable traits. The following discussion provides a list of the more common descriptions or classifications for collards. One of the most common labels seedsavers, mostly in the Carolinas, give to their heirlooms is cabbage-collard. This collard type typically doesn't form a cabbage-like head for much of its life, but may form a loose central head if it is left to grow for an extended season. The leaves are typically large with significant petioles. A large number of cabbage-collared heirlooms have a lighter yellow-green color. A common variety name you will find, especially in eastern counties of North Carolina, is the yellow cabbage collard. A few heirloom collards are collard-like in their early growth stages, but begin to form a leafy structure akin to a small loose cabbage head as the plants mature. These types are commonly called heading collards, and the heads of these heirlooms occur due to very shortened petioles or even a near lack of petioles that causes developing leaves to curl into a heading structure. One example of this type of heirloom collard is called William Alexander heading collar. Some collared heirlooms exhibit a shiny leaf appearance, and these collards are commonly called glossy or glazed collards. Glossy characteristics occur due to gene mutations that control waxes that cover leaves. In general, a glossy or glazed leaf usually exhibits less wax on its surface than normal leaves, and this results in the glazed appearance. A common heirloom that falls into this group is the green glaze collar. Some seedsavers have maintained collared heirlooms that have highly serrated leaves, much different than most collards, and these heirlooms are often described or classified as curly leafed. The degree of serration can be subtle or particularly pronounced in varieties that more resemble kale than collards. One example of this type of collard is called the crinkle leaf collard. Several heirloom collards grow much taller than typical collards, obtaining a small tree-like structure over a long growing season, or a height that is at least taller than an average person. These collards can also survive multiple seasons in mild climates. Unlike most general collard types, these heirlooms, which are commonly called a tree or perennial collards, have stems that elongate more than normal, leading to their taller nature. For more information on these unique plants, visit the website projecttreecollard. One example of this tree or perennial type collard is the Merritt Tree Collard. Collards can often be described or classified by their unique color variation. These color variations can occur in any of the previous types that I have described. Most color variations range from yellow green to green to blue green. Heirlooms that have a leaf hue that falls outside that spectrum are rarer and more atypical. When these atypical colors, for example, purple or red, are exhibited, seed savers often incorporate the color into the name of their collard. Colors can also exhibit in the petiole, the leaf veins, as well as in the leaf itself. One well-known example of this type of collard is the old timey blue collard.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

I find this piece so fascinating, I think, coming from not necessarily like a genetic background, but kind of making my way there and learning these things. I'm kind of curious, just what are your initial reflections and thoughts, Miss Ira, after hearing and revisiting this piece by Mark?

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Well, when I first got into heirloom collards, uh I was introduced to them by color variation. The first one that uh didn't get mentioned as a type is the variegated collard. Uh and when I was first given some and grew them, I didn't get the variegation because they need to be mature going into the winter uh in order to uh variegate as it gets colder. So that was uh a really fun one and people, you know, comment on it because it's so showy. Uh so that was there. And then uh when I went to a Southern SOG uh meeting in Birmingham, I got introduced to blue collars, uh which I had not known existed at that time, and uh got my first sample of the Alabama blues. Uh that was really nice. Um the he mentioned the tree collards and that they need a mild climate, and it really is true. I've tried them any number of times here, and they just don't winter over outside here in Virginia. Um, but they're kind of fun to see them get so tall. Um yeah. And uh one of his examples that William Alexander Heading, collard for uh heading collard, uh I like to mention because it's that first one that was saved by the African American uh sorority sisters, and uh some of it deposited in Svalbard. So uh not only is it a good way to remember that there are heading, semi-heading type collars, but also to bring that uh group of uh African American seed savers in Winston-Salem, because you go to these events and you see so many white people, you kinda forget that uh this tradition uh was carried on by African American people too. So yeah. Yeah, and Mark is so succinct in his uh descriptions to let you take a dance around the collard patch. And his he was the one who was maintaining the first collard patch that got me interested in the whole heirloom collard project.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Full circle, that's amazing to hear just about your experience with the different types of collards. I mean, I want to hear more about your experience with the variegated um collards and like yeah, just tell me more about that, but also more about these classifications, like which one do you find the most surprising or interesting or that you feel the most connected to and kind of why?

SPEAKER_02 13:53

I'll I'll mention the variegated. The variegated came uh to us from Walt Child's family in Northern Florida, which you know you think of Georgia and collard, but you don't think of it, but right on the Georgia, uh Florida b border is still heavy-collared country. Uh and um this uh seed saver Walt Charles sent our founder, Jeff McCormick seeds of uh, and said that you need to be seed saving to get to see that characteristic. And uh it was a reaction to a lower temperature, not too low, because it's I think it's a variety that's from northern Florida, but low enough. And uh you get big splashes of white and yellow white, and they're just and they of course it's in the winter, so they're it's sweet and tasty uh as well. I forgot what else you asked.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yeah, I gotta stop asking two questions in one. I'm bad for that. Um so Mark kind of introduces all these classifications, and I'm just curious which one you find the most fascinating or interesting or surprising. Um it kind of sounds like variegated possibly, but are there others out of these classifications that you find really interesting?

SPEAKER_02 15:38

The blue collared are something that you know I hadn't known about and that I like because purple's my favorite color. Uh and but they look so good uh just in the garden, and they're you know, different ones, some where most of the coloration changes in the petioles are in the leaf veins, and some where it's in the leaves themselves. And you can uh make a really pretty uh colored uh salad with with them too. Um, especially ones that are in the winter that are just barely uh large enough uh to uh have reached adulthood, but not the dinner plate size leaves yet. So you can uh chaffenade them and lightly uh marinade them in uh oil and vinegar dressing, and it's really good.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah, it is really good. I can attest. I love my collards like that too, just real soft and a little bit massage, kind of like kale. Going back to this point where you just mentioned how Mark was one of the first, his collard patch was one of the first patches that kind of inspired you to get into this work of collards. And he in the piece describes heirloom collards as being grown and perpetuated by numerous farmers and gardeners in the southeastern states. Just thinking about what is the significance of that, um, of having all these different individuals maintaining plant diversity and what kind of challenges might be might come from that. Um but also what are the benefits that we get out of having multiple people kind of maintaining these collards and this plant diversity found in them.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Well, collards are in some ways easy, you know, as a biennial, but because they are uh an obligate outcrosser, uh you you need to have um if you want to have a lot of different varieties, you need to have a lot of plants grown at a distance. And traditional small farms were perfect for that. You know, you'd have one little farm and then uh another f farm might be just a couple acres there, but it's enough distance that the collards would not cross and each person could kind of save uh to the specifications that they uh appreciated. And it meant that not everybody had to think this was the very best, this one thing is the very best uh characteristics to save for. And so when the seed saver movement that we're a part of came along in the 60s, there was a tradition of seed saving that uh had been strongest probably during and right after uh emancipation, uh when both small white farmers and newly emancipated uh black farmers were trying to feed their families, and uh and this was something that grew well in the region and had a lot of diversity, and if you don't have so much uh diversity in your diet, having a a crop that you know will do well, but having a purple one that you can trade uh leaves with with someone who has a light green one is uh a nice thing. And uh it brought uh a lot of vitamins into the a diet that was a little bit um heavy on the carbs and fats. So yeah. I I think that if we're uh looking to have that diversity into the future that we might have to be more uh really planning it because we we have uh a lot of people who you know have enough money that they can buy food from around the world. Uh yet uh unless you have sort of an uh ideological uh commitment to helping uh maintain genetic diversity, you might not think saving this one particular collard every year so it is maintained in the area where it does well is quite worth it yet. But that's what we're doing with the heirloom collard project is introducing people so they have the experience of tasting so many uh such diversity and seeing it, uh, and hopefully having uh enough people who think it's important that they save seeds of the same variety year after year or maybe pick two or three Varieties and every third year save seeds from each one so that uh they'll have it to pass on to their grandchildren.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah, I really appreciate the perspective you bring on just the historical context of collards and where these varieties really stem from and the work that was done and who it was done by. I think it's really important to recognize that, especially when we're thinking about these the groups now that are, you know, keeping them going and propelling them forward, um, and in some cases rediversifying these varieties. So thinking about that, kind of beyond the characteristics mentioned in the piece, what are some other traits that you think are important for seed savers or gardeners that are getting into this when classifying or selecting these collar varieties themselves? What are some things they should be kind of looking out for?

SPEAKER_02 23:06

Well, uh we have a friend Groskell who uh saves seeds for things that are winter hardy in Maryland, and uh he grows 30 acres of winter greens, and how he selects his brassicas is the fit survive, and so you know he'll harvest all of them uh lightly going up until Christmas when that uh peak in price in the market is there, and then uh change over to growing just for a few of his restaurant uh customers. But the ones that are looking nicest in terms of plants, he marks those, and then uh in late winter he puts them together so that they'll be close enough to uh mix with each other, and uh and then he saves what he calls his winter bread varieties. And people can do these kinds of uh experiments where you have a market goal that you're selecting for, and then you're also maintaining uh the mother lines uh of ones that are just hardy. As Antonio Brazo might show, they might have these huge root systems more so than other ones. Uh and if people weren't uh saving for hardiness, maybe those varieties might not have been selected because you know perhaps they're not the biggest leaf or uh the darkest green or something, but what they do is look sprightly and keep making leaves when it's cold.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Yeah, and that's a necessary, that's a need for collared um eaters. You want that to be present, right? Is making me think about this idea of labeling heirlooms and how heirlooms kind of appear. So thinking about the cabbage collar, it's mentioned a lot in the article. This idea of regional adaptation. I would love to hear your perspective because a lot of I've heard a lot of differing opinions on regional adaptation and how long it might take. And what you're saying, you know, selecting for this hardiness, it sounds like through that you're kind of selecting for regionally adapt and collards that can change within the climate and still be successful and productive and sprightly and good. Um, so I'm just curious about your thoughts around regional adaptation, not only just collards, but other things too. Like, yeah, just general thoughts about regional adaptation and what that means for for seed breeders and seed keepers.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Well, I I think it takes both more time and less time than you think to uh breed something. Uh you know, when I was first growing peanuts, uh we had this Carwells, Virginia, that uh, you know, had two plump seeds all the time and sometimes had three or four, and we started selecting for the ones that had three or four peanuts. But there wasn't as much of that in the gene pool as what made plump peanuts. Uh so you you got a a smaller percentage of um nuts per cluster if you were getting more peanuts in each uh shell. And sometimes someone else before you did a lot of work and the characteristic you're trying to sort out pops up very quickly because it's prevalent in the gene pool. Uh, but if that hasn't been happening, it can be quite a long process. Mark says, you know, you you need to grow you you have better luck if you grow and observe a variety and see what the natural variations are before you start trying to hone in on a particular characteristics. That's that's why uh someone who's growing a lot of a crop for market and at the same time doing some uh farmer breeding out of that population is gonna get results more quickly than someone who doesn't have acres of it there. Like Frank Morton and his lettuces and uh stuff are because he's partners uh with another farm that sells a lot of lettuce mix. And if you um have the population to select from you takes a while to get anywhere. But you know, like I say, some people notice a characteristic that's very unusual, and if it turns out to actually be a dominant characteristic, uh they can spread it in the population pretty quickly. Uh and these days, you know, we in the seed-saving uh community are trying to pass these basics about breeding and uh about record keeping so that uh it's easier to know what is likely to succeed uh as a breeding project with the varieties that you have. And these things like the ultra crosses are a good opportunity to kind of look and see what genetic diversity exists in uh a population uh in your particular area.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, that's really informative. I like hearing your thoughts around that because I feel like this idea of regional adaptation is founded in truth, right? But just kind of wrapping our heads around how long and what work needs to go around it to really amplify its abilities to stabilize and make crops more resilient in the face of changing climates. Um, so it's interesting to hear your thoughts on that. Kind of sticking to this idea around climate, how might changing climate and changing agricultural land use in the southeast impact these efforts on saving seed and maintaining these diverse heirloom-colored varieties? Um and what adaptive strategies do you think could be enacted to kind of hold back the long-term implications or uplift the long-term viability of these collared varieties?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Yeah, you know, I mentioned when it we're starting collards in the summer, we do multiple plantings to uh actually to get better collards for the table uh in the winter. And you can take that same strategy and keep track of what seed yields are like for the different plantings, because it doesn't it isn't always true that the one the collars that are the biggest going into the winter are going to be the best seed producers. It might turn out with according to how the weather is, uh that ones that were just barely mature enough uh to make seeds the next season are the ones that do best because the smaller plants when they're uh big enough, like they have eight leaves or so, uh they often survive better than larger ones if the weather is any kind of severe. So looking at at those, well, I would say, you know, from talking to Brett Grosgell, it's not that you are trying to do all of these things every year, but you have the opportunity to observe uh, you know, which plants get big and maintain leaf production over the winter, or which ones uh, for example, are not that big in the winter, so they're not the best producers there, but they grow really fast in the spring, so you can get good leaf production and uh have uh a lot of leaves to support seed production as well. And over time you can decide which of you know which percentage of seeds of each of those types you're gonna try to have in your winter mixture. And it, you know, it takes a long time to make a relatively uniform population.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

So yeah, totally. And I think like you don't always want that uniformity. Sometimes you want some differentiation within your population, just whether from enjoyment at looking at it or eating it or whatever it might be. Um yeah, that's really interesting. We were talking earlier about these perennial collarts that were mentioned in the piece, um, and thinking about these like multi-season harvest and the potential benefits from that. Um yeah, I'm just kind of curious what are the long-term benefits and challenges of integrating these perennial brassicas into our farming systems and your thoughts around that. I mean, considering like maybe soil health or pest or whatever it might be, um how do you feel about these perennial collards?

SPEAKER_02 35:36

It it depends. Uh yeah, my friend Pam Darling uh decided to have one month of no visible uh brassica leaves in the garden at uh at Tonoaks where where she gardened because there are just so many insect pests at that time of year, uh, that it's she thinks it's better to uh start a new uh patch because you can keep them covered uh for the first you know six or eight weeks, and you've had that three or four weeks that you didn't have that you'd cleared out all of the brassicas, and so that can often uh interrupt these pest cycles. So that's you know one thing. Uh but what it takes to be a perennial vegetable might be, I mean, in California they have a lot of these tree collars and they do well. Uh but they don't get killed off by temperatures that much. So if you have an area where the like in the coastal Carolinas and Virginia, uh northern Florida, uh where you have the weather with you, you could experiment and see if if weather isn't doing these plants in, would they survive and would they uh be able to uh survive the summer uh insect pressure? Possibly. Uh I don't know how the farmers are gonna do it, but you know, realizing this work that there's so much difference in uh the root systems of plants, they might find that there's some that have uh better root systems uh and are more able to withstand the summer pressures. It's a mystery. But mysteries are things that keep adventurous gardeners going.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Yeah, that's right. It keeps us curious and trying to figure out things, it keeps us active and focused on our crops, which is always important. Um yeah, endless questions here around collards. I think that's why we're able to have a whole crop stories magazine and discussion around each one, is because there are so many thoughts around it, whether it's like the cultural aspects or the breeding aspects or the growing aspects or whatever, kind of wrapping up our conversation. I'm thinking about this idea of like romanticizing growing collards, and you kind of brought in this perspective of yeah, there's insects, there's pests, there's all these things that I think a lot of people who maybe aren't in the world of working with these perennial collards or these other varieties and trying to um discover the most hardy and best ones. Going back to this idea of romanticizing instead being more like realistic and factual, and um within that being more ethical, thinking of this thing around labeling and naming collards. I'm from the Carolinas, and I'm thinking of the cabbage collards and what role community research kind of plays in accurately documenting and conserving these localized varieties, these localized diverse mixes and the associated like knowledge with them. How do we kind of ethically highlight these and label these regional regional things? How do you feel about that? And what do you see as the best practices around that?

SPEAKER_02 40:21

Well, I think sharing the in as much information as you have is one thing, uh, because a lot of them are named for someone who maintained it. But you know, you s hear some descriptions that start out with this was brought from New England to the Carolinas in 18 some year, or this variety uh went from Oklahoma to Washington State uh at a certain time later, so that you you have the things that the gardener or farmer knows in particular, like who they got it from, but you have at least the arc of it came with a neighbor's grandfather from some other country, even. Uh and that helps you with also deciding if you're doing a little breeding project, what types uh of collards might uh have similar characteristics so you can cross and then let them segregate and uh perhaps have a higher percentage of that characteristic. And also with just uh when you're at seed swaps and stuff, telling sharing the info about your uh projects makes it more likely that other people will share details uh about the varieties that they're working with, how long they've had them, whether they mixed up several or they've tried to keep them pure and um I th I think that's good because it it brings it closer to farmers and gardeners being active breeders rather than just maintaining it's good somebody needs to maintain, so I'm not saying that that's not a good thing, but um if we want to explore the edges of what's possible, or if we're trying to grow collard in a climate that isn't the most supportive, then look knowing which varieties did well in the edge. People who save seeds grown outside in New Jersey might have something you know to share with people a little further north than them. Um so keep good notes.

SPEAKER_01 43:47

I think that's a really fair assessment of how to get these conversations or keep these conversations going and the keeping the lines of communication open, I think, is really important when kind of working with these. varieties and trying to recognize the work that other people have put in and the history around that and that we are just a blimp in the moment of these collards lifeline lifetimes so recognizing that too um yeah lots to think about there and there's always more conversations we can have around just the ethics and what's right to kind of label and name these varieties and how to do so yeah I I think saying why you stuck that name on there it really helps.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Uh I I was looking at a packet that uh a person sent me and they said this person gave me this to share uh with Seed Savers but they didn't want it to be commercial uh so you can share these in your seeds uh work but uh I prefer you not to you know offer it in your catalog whereas other people are the opposite they want as many people to have what they consider a fabulous variety as possible yeah totally I think that's where we right carry this idea of just honesty and respect around the seed and the people doing work around them.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Um yeah that's really good. Well Miss Ira if you don't have any other lingering thoughts or ideas I just want to say thank you for this really insightful conversation. It's been fascinating to dive deeper into these topics the themes that Mark presented in his excerpt it's really interesting to kind of although it was a short excerpt it's there's so much to talk about within it. And like I said earlier despite our conversations just being focused on college each discussion has been so different and highlights many um varying aspects of colorage and what it means to work with them. So I'm just excited to keep these conversations going and see what we can chat about next time.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

Yeah have you ever been to that uh demonstration garden at the ARAC in Charleston I have not no yeah I I don't know why I didn't think of it when it was happening but they grew a bunch of the Davis Morion collection uh last year and had a big open house uh in the fall for people to come see them and I I I was getting ready to go when I thought of oh we should have been blasting this over the collard network because it was seeing one of those demonstrations that got me excited.

SPEAKER_01 47:05

Wow yeah that sounds really interesting next time I'm out that way I'll have to maybe stop by and see it if it's if they're still active or doing something in the fall that would be cool. Yeah I think just getting the word out about the different projects and how people can get involved and I like how it's kind of like a choose your own adventure in some ways. You're able to kind of whether you have a history with collards or not you can kind of figure what you like and or take insight from the work of collards and put it towards another crop that you feel more connected to but yeah I think there's a lot to learn from collards. I'm excited to keep learning and think about these things with you some more. Well do you have any other thoughts or ideas before we wrap up no I think we're doing good me too well thank you again so much for chatting with me and join us next time everyone for our next conversation around collars I'm sure it will be as invigorating and exciting um as this very fascinating conversation's been so thanks for listening and thank you Miss Aira again for sitting with us and sharing your your opinions and thoughts really appreciate it with us in the crops we love every seed we save and every story we tell helps shape our food system into something deeper and more resilient. If today's episode sparked a bit of curiosity please share it with a friend or fellow gardener. And if you're able head to our show notes to become a monthly supporter via our crop stories donation link. Your contributions help keep this project going. Thank you and until next time