Broccoli plants
 

Came home today to find one of my dozen broccoli plants has a mini head forming! One of the few things left growing that I can look forward to. I have never had home grown broccoli before and cant wait. Wondering now how long it will be before I can harvest that first head

Depends on a number of things (temperatures the plant has seen, weather from here on out, variety, etc). Keep an eye on it. Hopefully it will get 6+ inches in diameter. You want to harvest it just at the point when it goes from being very tight and firm to just starting to loosen up--that will be your maximum size. After that it's getting ready to flower.

Broccoli that matures in cool weather is the best, IMO. My guess is you have another two weeks +/- before it's ready.

The other hint is to only cut it just below the crown, NOT way down the stem.

The reason is that most varieties of broccoli will send out side shoots from the latent buds at the leaves. Those side branches can produce as much if not more than the main head depending on the conditions.

Don't worry about freezing temps either. As long as the temps get up above freezing evey day or so the plants will keep on growing, tho slower.

We just lost the last of our Broccoli last week when the temps stayed near zero for about 4 days solid. But the Sunday just before than I cut over a bu of nice side shoots from stuff that was planted in early July and had been cut several times already.

Carol

Thanks folks, much appreciated!

I don't know if you'll see heads as large as 6 inches this time of the year. I have found the broccoli that makes heads sometimes 8 or 9 inches across in the spring will only get about 4 or 5 inches when planted in the fall if it doesn't get killed by a severe freeze. The plants are usually much smaller too. I try to plant a fall crop in late Oct. or early Nov. and a spring crop in early Feb. til early March depending on the weather in both cases. Usually my fall crop is slow to head and makes small plants unless winter is mild. The worst thing that can happen besides a killing freeze is an unusually hot warm spell which will cause small plants to head before they are large enough to produce a good head. I did two different plantings this fall because squirrels ate the centers out of about 1/3 of my broccoli so I planted some more in Dec. None of mine have started heading yet and that is good because they haven't gotten too big due to the torrential rains we've had.

The variety is Green Comet and they were transplanted on October 25th. The plants are around 18 inches tall and only the one has started heading. 56 day mark today since transplant. We have had some cold weather for our area but nothing like folks north of us are accustomed to.

I've had good luck with Green Comet in the past but have not grown it in a long time. My best luck has come from Packman and Early Dividend. Three years ago I had some unusually large heads form with several of them over 10 inches across with a tight bead. I keep hoping I'll get some that big again. It must have been a perfect spring for broccoli that year and our whole family tired of eating it so the next year I cut my planting by half and natuarally made only small heads.

I often use Packman for an early crop, tho you do have to watch it well in hot weather. For better heads I usually plant Arcadia or Gypsy. I had some 3 lb heads last summer from them. And that was just the crown cuts.

Even if the main head does give a small head do to weather issues, don't give up on the plant as often conditions will change and the side shoots will be better than the main head.

Carol

Green Comet is supposedly a good producer of side shoots

i used to buy green comet until all the greenhouses stopped carrying it and offered the worst broccoli i ever grew packman. you couldn't pay me to grow packman. green comet did produce a lot of side shoot all season.

since i couldn't buy green comet it got me to start broccoli from seed which was a good thing. if you want large side shoots all season grow calabrese green sprouting, an op. keep it watered in the heat of summer and you will be surprised how productive it is. i typically get side shoot heads 2" to even 4" in size. sometimes i get those large side shoots really mini heads but at times most are the small size. not sure why this variety produces small shoots to mini heads.

de cicco is another op that i grow.

All of the plants are heading now. I cant wait to try some

I've grown Packman, Green Comet, Umpqua, Waltham 29, Dia Green, Arcadia, Gypsy, Premium Crop, and Marathon. My favorites are Arcadia, Gypsy, and Marathon for taste, reliability, and good sized heads.

Carol, agree about the side shoots. The side shoots make broccoli a much more "efficient" crop--they really increase the overall yield, as well as spread it out over the season.

I had wondered if anyone had tried the sprouting types.

Is the sproutting type also what is known as Broccoli Raab ?? Or is that something else again ?

At the conference I was at, Seedway had a purple sprouting type from Bejo that isn't even listed in their catalog. It looked and sounded great, but you know how seed reps can be about stuff.

But I think I'm going to try that purple and a green this year. When we have it, Mom works on keeping the baskets full on the stand. She really likes that job and is disappointed on markets when we don't have broccoli. I think the purple will add something extra to draw people to our stand.

I just hope the purple seed isn't as expensive as the purple and orange cauliflower seed, Grafitti and Chedar. Around $50/ thousand is rather high. Especially if the stuff bolts when the weather isn't just right.

But with this sproutting broccoli, I would think that because it's a cut and come again type of crop, it should be worth it even if the price is rather high. I hope so anyway.

Carol

Carol, I've grown purple sprouting broccoli. I got it in 6-packs from the nursery and iirc it was described as 120 or 150 days to maturity. I let a couple plants grow for 2 years or so, and they got huge, 4-6 ft. high and 3-4 ft. wide or more, with big floppy leaves. The trunks eventually got 2 inches in diameter. I love broccoli leaves, so at first I was happy to have this plant. But in my garden at least, I didn't get a main head, and the smaller heads that formed in the spring attracted the first flush of aphids. I was growing it in the shadier side of my garden plot and with compost, so perhaps with more sun or with fert it would have done better. In fact, I have seen it in other gardens where it was producing more. But mostly it was way too big for my garden space. I kept pulling out rooted stalks and giving them away, and cutting it to the ground, and it kept coming back stronger than ever.

Another one I've planted from a nursery 6-pack is peacock broccoli/kale. A couple plants (that are different, so maybe this wasn't stable) have survived 3 years, and I still get a small handful of side shoots every couple weeks or so in the warmer months. The more colorful one is very pretty, with light to medium green shoots and leaves tinged with magenta, and the leaves have divided edges, more like kale than broccoli. The side shoots are so tender that I just eat them as a garden snack, so I don't know how they are cooked. And I haven't found aphids on this one yet, but it's in a better (sunnier) spot.

Yes I've seen on a couple of seed sites that the sprouting broccoli is like 150 days or more. I don't have that kind of growing season, even counting the fact that broccoli is frost tolerant. There is no way I would be able to keep it growing thru our winters here.

But the Bejo guy made it sound like it would be a quick crop if planted as early as possible in spring. Maybe their hybrid is diferent from the old types. They did say that there wasn't really a "main head", just lots of side shoots. They did say that the plant will get huge too. That's OK for me as we have plenty of land.

I've heard of Peacock Kale but never heard of it having "shoots". Mostly I've seen it as a decorative plant for fall flower beds. I'll have to see if I can find more info on that.

Thanks,
Carol