By Melanie Steen
“I think second, third, fourth act,” says Donald Danforth Plant Scientist Antonio Brazelton. “I think collards are here to stay. It’s gonna be something that we’re going to end up working with for a while.”
Collard greens have a rich history that’s as beautiful as their dark, expansive leaves. The vegetable has been around for thousands of years, crossing continents and cultures. Their appeal is what drew Washington University PhD candidate, Antonio Brazelton, to leave Huntsville, Alabama and plant roots in St. Louis.
“I had just finished my 5th year at Bayer Crop Sciences and I was getting ready to start the PhD and I was like, what crop do I want to work on,” he says. “What work do I want to do? And so I sent a survey out to some the urban farmers in the St. Louis metro region to see what crops were they growing and what issues they were having, and collards kept popping up.”
It was around this time, Brazelton learned about the Heirloom Collards Project. It’s a network of collard-loving folks that includes seed savers, farmers, chefs, artists and gardeners.
“Right when the Heirloom Collards Project was starting, it was like oh well, here’s an array of germ plasm across these different heirloom varieties of collards,” he says. “I have tons of germ plasm to work with. And so, I ended up contacting the folks at the Heirloom Collards Project. They put me in contact with the people at USDA, and now, we have a tons of seeds for the project.”
His project is housed at JJK FAN, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Food, Nutrition and Innovation Center in East St. Louis. The climate controlled, expansive greenhouse can hold collard greens as far as the eye can see.
“All year-round, because the greenhouse is made for basically all winter, summer, fall, everything,” says Grow Team member Damion Jones. “It’s basically weather proof.”
“Some days are good, some days are bad,” says Grow Team member Jamarco McCoy. “We get crops in, we get mulch in and dirt, and do multiple tasks, mulch, till, tend to the flowers, water them.”
While the Heirloom Collards Project has nearly a hundred different types of collards in its catalog, Antonio has 18 varieties he’s currently working with. And today, he’s getting his hands and his jeans dirty, all for the love of collard greens.
“These vary in a wide range since they’re all heirlooms,” he says. “Some of them are purple, some of them are yellow, some of them have leaves that are more serrated, like a kale. Some of these are more round. Some of these have a nice glaze, or sheen to them.”
He tells us there are two main varieties found in grocery stores or farmer’s markets: vates and top bunch. Those collards typically have a uniform shape, with rounded leaves. During our visit, the recently appointed president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center toured the greenhouse and chatted collards with Brazelton.
“I think that some of the work that we’re doing here, we can both be experimenting with things like collard greens, understanding how we improve those varieties for local consumption, but also how we drive sustainable farming systems,” says President Giles Oldroyd. “And there’s a lot that we can learn here, particularly in an environment where we’re taking it back from urban – back into a food production landscape.”
These collards we’re looking at now will be ready to harvest in about 60 days. The project lauched in october 2024, which means Brazelton and his team are in their 3rd growing season.
Kurly Taylor is the Strategic Partnership Manager with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. He oversees internships with some high school students in East St. Louis. He’s paired them with Brazelton on the collards project.
“The response was great,” says Taylor. “I think one, they get to put their hands on something. But then also, Antonio talked about the culturally relevant piece. When we talk to our students about agriculture and I’m going into the schools to talk with them, they kind of get turned off naturally. And I think it’s because agriculture as it relates to the black experience is looked at as slavery, and we don’t talk about the positive gains and the major transformations that African Americans have contributed to agriculture.”
When it comes to the collard greens project, it’s a labor of love for Brazelton and the entire East St. Louis community.
“My grandmama grew collards,” says Jamarco McCoy. “We grew up on collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, spinach, all that stuff.”
“I grew up eating a lot of collard greens and things of that nature,” says Damion Jones. “Collard greens, bell peppers, all that stuff because my granny cooked it.”
“We’ve had organizations like Peace & Progress, the Ujima Farming Cooperative, the folks who are actually involved in the Heirloom Collard Project who gave us the seeds have been out,” says Brazelton. “We’ve had folks from the Red Circle come out.”
Whether it’s young people, or well-seasoned folks, collard greens is the one thing that seems to connect the East St. Louis community, and communities like it all over the country.
“In a lot of ways, I saw myself as the first plant scientist in my family,” says Brazelton. “And I think in a lot of ways with reconnecting with these collards, it’s really given me the opportunity to validate some of the stories and some of the experiences with my mom and my grandma, family members, other folks who live in the community. It means a lot to me to be able to say I do plant science, but I do plant science in a community with a crop that matters. I couldn’t see myself doing plant science any other way.”
