I have a bunch of unidentified brassica seedlings, that have sprouted in plug trays that were sown two or more years ago, but not transplanted at the opportune moment. They subsequently dried out and died, and if memory serves me correctly one or two came up last year – but not enough to write home about.

My suspicion is that they are three types of Kale; the exact planting is lost in the mists of time (owing to the injudicious use of deletion rather than archiving), but from my stash I have a suspicion that what I’m looking at are seedlings of curly kales Redbor, Reflex and (probably) Nero di Toscana, though I cannot yet identify which is which.

I have seedlings in three trays out of three, about half a dozen in each and already forming decent rootballs. Since the plugs were only half full of compost, I’ve “repotted” them into empty cells within the same trays. These will shortly be moved into better sunlight, lightly fertilised and left to grow on for a month or so, after which they can be potted up into 3" pots and eventually planted out.

Whilst this has happened by accident, the fact that they’ve come up three years in a row suggests that this might not be a bad way to sow brassicas by intention. I might experiment with wintersowing a few trays of seed this year, taking what I need and throwing the trays on one side until next spring…