Did I cut too much off my kale?

Question

I am wondering if I cut off too much from this plant. Please advise.

Answer 1

Not likely to kill it, since you did leave a few leaves. A less drastic approach is more typical, assuming adequate number of plants to get the amount of kale you need.

Also, I find that leaving some of the bigger leaves at the base once they've gotten past the "desireable to harvest" stage (for my kale plants, when the water stops beading on the surface of the leaves, the leaves are better left than eaten - yours may vary) is apparently better for the plant than removing all the lower leaves. If you have so few plants that you eat them all before they get too old, yours might look different. But having leaf area in the sun is what gets the plant energy...and that energy allows it to make new leaves that are worth eating.

So, probably more than is advisable for peak production, but probably not to the point of actually killing the plant outright.