Zeekool
De dikke zaden van zeekool kunnen een maand lang rond drijven op zee, en dan ergens aanspoelen en ontkiemen. Zeekool is een blauwgroene vlezige plant. De bladeren lijken op koolbladeren, maar hebben lange stelen. De witte bloemtrossen geuren erg lekker. De stoere plant groeit op zeedijken en aan de voet van de duinen. De stengels van zeekool zijn eetbaar. Zeekool leent zich goed voor de teelt op brakke grond, waar andere tuinbouwgewassen niet gedijen. Steeds meer koks ontdekken de waarde van deze bijzondere groente.
Verspreiding en habitat
Sinds 1935 komt zeekool ook voor in Nederland. Nadat de eerste plant op Schouwen gevonden werd duurde het lang voordat de soort zich verder uitbreidde. Tegenwoordig is de Afsluitdijk de rijkste vindplaats voor wilde zeekool in Nederland.
Gebruik volgens Dodonaeus
Dese koolen sijn seer werm ende drooch van natueren/ ende veel stercker dan die Tamme koolen. Hun Cracht ende werckinghe, zijn Die wilde Zee koolen sijn den tammen ghelijck/ maer veel stercker ende meer afvagende/ ende daer om en dienen sy oock niet als spijse ghebruyckt.
Die bladeren van desen koolen ghestooten/ ghenesen ende heylen die versche wonden ende doen sceyden die gheswellen daer op gheleyt.
Er is weinig bekend over de gezondheidswaarde van de zeekool, er zijn wel mosterdolieglycosiden aanwezig en ook vitamine C. De koolsoorten hebben altijd een grote gezondheidswaarde gehad en zijn de laatste jaren steeds belangrijker geworden omwille van hun kankerwerende werking. Als ik Dodoens mag geloven dan zou de wilde zeekool nog sterker werkzaan zijn dan 'de tamme koolen'. Dus zeker de moeite waard om dit verder te onderzoeken.
http://huis-en-tuin.infonu.nl/tuin/44235-zeekool-zilte-scheuten-vol-schoonheid.html
Le crambe maritime,
que l'on connait sous le nom de chou marin, ou chou maritime, n'est pas un chou comme les autres. C'est une plante vivace (le chou classique est bisannuel) de la famille des Crucifères, qui pousse spontanément sur le littoral de l'Europe occidentale et de la Mer Noire. Cependant, de nos jours, il devient rare de le trouver à l'état naturel. C'est pour cela qu'il est entré dans la longue liste des plantes sauvages protégées : interdiction, donc, de le ramasser lors de vos promenades !
Les feuilles du crambe maritime sont de couleur vert blanchâtre à bleuâtre. Grandes et épaisses, leur limbe ondule.
Au cours du printemps, de longues tiges se dressent, portant, à leur extrémité, de nombreuses petites fleurs réunies en grappes, de couleur blanche (et non jaune, comme les autres choux) et au cœur parfois rosé. Gorgées de nectar et de pollen, les abeilles en sont friandes.
Pourquoi cultiver le crambe maritime ?
Ce sont les pétioles qui, lorsqu'ils sont jeunes, sont récoltés pour être consommés comme des asperges. Ils peuvent atteindre 50 à 70 cm de hauteur. Leur goût se rapprocherait de celui du cardon ou du chou-fleur. Les feuilles aussi sont comestibles, une fois cuites.
Comment introduire le crambe dans le jardin ?
Comme le crambe maritime est rare et protégé, si vous souhaitez profiter de la finesse de ses jeunes pousses, il n'y a qu'une solution : le cultiver. Rassurez-vous, cela n'est guère très compliqué.
Le crambe se sème plutôt au soleil ou sous une ombre légère. Le sol doit être léger et drainant. Les terres acides sont à bannir.
Les semis se font au printemps, du mois de mars au mois de juin, en pépinière ou en place. Les semis en place doivent être éclaircis tous les 40 cm, tandis que les semis en pépinières sont repiqués au stade de 5 à 6 feuilles.
Ensuite, il faut patienter trois ans avant d’effectuer la première récolte. En attendant, binez et arrosez régulièrement les plants.
Un mois avant la récolte des pétioles, procédez au blanchiment à l'aide d'un paillage ou d'une haute cloche opaque.
Conseil d'entretien : supprimez les feuilles abimées et mortes, les pousses faibles.
Le saviez-vous ?
Le crambe est cueillit depuis toujours. Cependant, si sa culture semble avoir débutée en Grèce durant l'antiquité, en Europe, il fallut attendre le 17e siècle. Et c'est l'Angleterre qui commença.
Louix XIV exigeait d'avoir ce légume dans son potager !
Lees meer via http://www.aujardin.info/plantes/crambe-maritima.php#319gvf3lx8zro421.99
Sea kale (Crambe maritima) and Relatives
(This growing guide is an excerpt from The Cultivariable Growing Guide, available in this store and as a Kindle book on Amazon.)
Sea kale (also seakale, Crambe maritima) is a wild plant of northern European sea shores. It has a form very similar to leaf cabbages or collards, although the leaves are thicker. It is most commonly grown for its spring shoots, which are blanched and used like asparagus. All parts of the plant are edible. The florets are very much like broccoli, although smaller. Thousands of small white flowers open over several weeks in the spring and smell strongly of honey.
Sea kale is perennial. When grown for many years, plants can become very large, spreading over a diameter as large as five feet (1.5 m). In the garden, plants are typically much smaller due to continual harvest of new shoots and occasional division of the plants.
The plants are unaffected by frost, but top growth is killed by sufficiently cold temperatures. They typically die here when temperatures fall to about 25° F (-4 C). When not killed by cold weather, the plants naturally senesce in fall or early winter to sprout again in the spring. Flowering occurs here primarily in May and June.
Wild sea kale has a high degree of genetic diversity and that diversity is widespread, rather than concentrated in local populations; this is probably a consequence of the distribution of sea kale seed by the ocean (Bond 2005).
There is a botanical variety of seakale native to the Black Sea, C. maritima var. pontica. It’s seedlings are pubescent (Briard 2002). This variety may be diploid (Sanyal 2015) and therefore could be particularly valuable for breeding. Most varieties of sea kale are tetraploid and therefore are not true breeding.
History
Sea kale florets can be eaten like broccoli
Sea kale was once a common cultivated vegetable in France and Britain, with a small number of named varieties. By the turn of the 21st century, there was no longer any commercial sea kale production in either country (Briard 2002). As with so many of the crops in this book, the reasons for its abandonment lie in difficulties adapting to modern, mechanical agriculture and the perishability of its products.
Although it is a common plant of European seashores, it has disappeared or become uncommon in large parts of its range in recent years, particularly in the UK (Scott 1958).
Sea kale had a brief period of popularity in the United States and was grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello beginning in 1809. It has naturalized on the west coast, at least at Yaquina Head, OR, where it was first reported in 1915 (Nelson 1918). If it is growing there, it is probably growing in other places as well.
Interest in sea kale is returning and the first commercial crops in many years are being raised in the UK (Mesure 2014). Along with that, foragers are harvesting wild sea kale and selling it to London restaurants, receiving about $10 per pound. In some cases, they are picking it illegally (Millard 2014). All the more reason to put more sea kale into cultivation!
Nutrition
Although sea kale has many edible parts, nutritional analysis is available only for the principal product: blanched shoots. Nutritional values for leaves are probably not too different from shoots, but florets and roots aren’t likely to be comparable. For best estimates, it seems likely that broccoli and sea kale florets would be similar.
sea-kale-nutrition-labelBlanched shoots compare favorably to asparagus in vitamin and mineral content, with similar values overall, but considerably more potassium (Peron 1991).
Cooking and Eating
The primary product of sea kale traditionally has been blanched shoots, but all parts of the plant are edible.
The leaves are like a very thick cabbage, but are bitter and most people will only find them to be palatable raw when they are very small (they are still bitter, but not
as intensely so). The leaves can be cooked, usually by boiling, which mellows the bitterness considerably. They can also be fried until crispy (Mesure 2014), something that I haven’t tried yet, but you can bet that I will! The roots can be cooked and are somewhat like rutabaga in flavor, although the plant needs to be about three years old before the roots reach a good size for eating.
Seed pods are edible while they are still green. They are crunchy and have a pleasant, sweet flavor. They make an appealing addition to salads. You probably shouldn’t eat tons of them due to high erucic acid content. Erucic acid is considered a possible contributor to heart disease, although it is present in many vegetables and the dietary advisory limits are much higher than you will ever get eating a few dozen sea kale seeds.
You can either direct sow sea kale seeds or start them indoors. Sea kale seedlings are relatively robust and can be direct seeded in most cases. Germination is usually better indoors, so if you have a small amount of seed, that is usually the best choice. If you have plenty of seed, it will be easier to direct sow them in the spring as soon as the soil warms up to about 45° F.
Seeds
I remove the pericarp (corky shell) from the seeds, which improves germination both because water can reach the seed more easily and because it eliminates the frequent empty shells. If you have obtained your seeds in the shells, you should remove them, because they can take a long time to break down naturally. A test of 400 seeds surface sown in their pericarps found no germination after one year (Scott 1958). In my experience, results with intact seed are usually better than that, but significantly worse than with shelled seed. A small pair of wire
snippers is a good tool for removing the shells by hand. Plant the seeds about 1 inch deep (2.5 cm), water well, and provide 60° F (15 C) bottom heat if ambient temperature is not already warm enough. Expect germination within two weeks. Even under strong light, seedlings tend to grow leggy, so you should transplant them at least once, burying up to the cotyledons.
Optionally, you can do your first watering with a saturated solution of non-iodized salt (pickling salt) in water. The salt will remain in the potting soil, doing no ha
rm to the seedlings, but can help to prevent problems with seedling diseases. To be clear, salt does not improve germination or health of seedlings directly (de Vos 2010) but in my experience it appears to reduce problems with the seedlings such as damping off, probably by making the soil less hospitable. Subsequent watering should be done only with fresh water.
Germination may be improved by salt stimulation: pre-soaking the seeds in salt water. In one study, soaking the seeds (with pericarp removed) for 35 days in 150% salt water more than doubled germination (Woodell 1985). This may be a useful technique for germinating old seed.