Growing Collard Greens: A Complete Profile

By Growing Home Greens Team · July 18, 2026

Collard greens are a Southern staple for a reason: they’re tough, cold-hardy, and keep producing edible leaves through conditions that would end most other greens for the season. The tradeoff is that they take space and time. This isn’t a quick, tuck-it-anywhere crop.

Starting it, and giving it the room it needs

Collards can be started indoors seven weeks before last frost or direct-sown a few weeks before it, and at 70 days to maturity, they’re a slower-growing brassica than mustard or bok choy. The plant grows fairly tall and broad-leaved, and at only one plant per square foot, it needs room. Crowd it and it will shade out shorter neighbors. Frost improves the flavor of collard leaves, sweetening them, which is part of why they’re often left in the ground well into cold weather.

A two-month tenant, so space is the real constraint

Because collards occupy a square foot for over two months, the main planning problem is usually space rather than plant health, giving them too little room stunts both the collards and whatever’s growing nearby. Keep them away from tomatoes and peppers, both commonly reported as poor neighbors for collards.

Tall enough to shade its neighbors

Onion scent may help deter common collard pests, and dill nearby attracts beneficial predatory wasps that protect brassicas generally. See the full companion guide for collard-greens. Because collards are tall and only one per square foot, a dense planting can shade out shorter neighbors as it sizes up. Give it the north or back edge of a bed in the Garden Designer so its shade falls away from shorter crops instead of over them.

Companion planting guide for Collard Greens · Find your planting dates

Typically viable in USDA zones 3-11. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.

Method: Either: Start indoors for an earlier harvest, or direct-sow outside for less fuss. Collard Greens tolerates either.

See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →

How many Collard Greens plants fit per square foot?

Spacing: 1 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 2-3 ft.

Varieties worth considering

• Georgia Southern (Creole): NC State Extension identifies Georgia Southern, along with Vates, Carolina Improved Heading (Morris), Blue Max, and Heavi Crop, as varieties that have consistently done well in North Carolina. Georgia Southern is the larger, more productive of the two most common choices, while Vates is milder and slower to bolt. (source)
• Vates: The other of NC State's two most common choices, milder in flavor and slower to bolt than Georgia Southern. The pick if you want a longer harvest window over Georgia Southern's larger yield. (source)
• Blue Max: Also on NC State's list of North Carolina-tested performers. Worth trying as a third option if neither of the two most common choices above has done well in your particular soil and climate. (source)

Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.

Where to buy collard greens seeds

• Botanical Interests
• True Leaf Market
• Burpee
• High Mowing Organic Seeds

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See it growing

Search YouTube for "growing collard greens" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)

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Growing Collard Greens: A tall, broad-leaved brassica that shrugs off frost and keeps producing long after more delicate greens have quit.

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