I don't know walking stick Kale--is that the same as walking stick cabbage?

Anyway, if your Spanish Kale is tronchuda, PM me. However, I will say that I personally would not try to make it into a perennial--it's a stinkbug, aphid, and whitefly magnet in hot weather. Also gets extremely coarse when it gets big.

But if you want to try it, I have seeds.

ETA, BTW mine never grows straight up, kind of twisty.

I tried tronchuda & found it tough & bitter - not worth growing, IMPO. Thinking it may take a season or 2 for any cabbage to get tall enough, if it's anything like the lacinato kale I grew, which formed a very long stalk (approx. 3') over the course of 2 seasons, then died out in the fierce summer heat & humidity. & it also did not grow straight, but curved @ an angle - really not useful for staking anything.

I just build trellises, or use poles for beans & I have tall cages & ladders for my tomatoes.

These are the ladders I have, powder coated steel & can be stacked:

My cages are simply sections of salvaged concrete reinforcement wire , rolled into cylinders & anchored to rebar stakes.

HTH

Yeah, the only way I really use it is in soups. Of course, it's the star of Caldo Gallego, but it's pretty good in most soups where you might use kale. I don't like it raw or used as a cabbage substitute in most dishes. But it is more heat tolerant than regular kales. This past winter my other kales were pretty shabby, but the tronchuda loved the heat.

Well, I have seeds coming, so I'll try this one and maybe one other. It's just an experiment. I'm trying to do interplanting in an intensive permaculture design, so we'll see what happens. I was going to only use pigeon pea, but I thought maybe something I could get some use out of would be nice. I'll also be using it as biomass, so if it turns out to be to tough to eat, I can juice it or use it as chop-and-drop.

D, I grow a lot of kale varieties in my garden but in the summer they all decline and I start with new plants for the fall.

I am reading a book now the Tao of Vegetable Gardening and she lives on the West Coast and is growing 'Russian Hunger Gap' a kale variety something like the one that you asked and even in her weather she says that in the summer they decline and plant new ones for the next season. In the book Perennial Vegetables he said that he was not impressed by the Walking Stick Kale, its rubbery texture and strong cabbage flavor of the leaves and his died in the winter.

I planted Winterbor one season and they are really tall, here is planted next to a regular kale and ornamental kale.

Now in my garden I have Red Russian kale and Lacinato planted with the sweet potatoes and if you can see the sticks is where I picked the leaves this morning, soon they will come out and I will start new kale varieties for the next season...

Silvia

Silvia, I'm not really a huge kale fan, but yours is lovely. I like the stronger tasting green; collard, mustard, cabbage, etc. which is why I think I would like the taller kales. Like I said, it's just an experiment, and I may end up pulling them up or just using them for biomass. I'm trying to find plants (like sweet potatoes and pigeon pea) which give food and are good for biomass and other purposes, like ground covers or nitrogen fixing. I'm really getting into permaculture now.

From the pictures it does not look that different from some of the cabbage collards or smoother kale. It does seem to grow a bit straighter than the varieties I have in my garden.