Broccoli

With the spring broccoli crop on its last leg, now is the time to think about a fall crop of broccoli.  If you have a good source for seedlings, you can wait until early August to plant them in your garden.  However, these seedlings can be hard to find in the late summer, so verify availability with your local nursery before going this route.  The better option in our opinion is to grow your own from seed.  It is a much cheaper and more reliable way to go.  Unlike the spring crop, which must be started indoors, the fall crop can be seeded directly into your garden.  This is a HUGE savings in time and effort.

     Side floret emerging

Tips and Tricks:

• If your garden soil contains heavy clay, plant the seeds in a pocket of a 50/50 peat and sand mixture.  This will help hold moisture around the seed and give the young seedling a light medium to push through.
• Starting these in the middle of summer requires special attention be paid to soil moisture.  Do not let germinating seeds or young seedlings dry out.
• Broccoli is quite disease and pest resistant, but it does have a few things to keep an eye out for.  We discussed downy mildew in this post.  Neem oil has worked really well for us in controlling this disease.  The imported cabbageworm can defoliate a small plant in a day, so keep an eye out for them.  We've previously discussed them here. Hand picking will keep them at bay and Bacillus thuringiensis will finish them off.
• Cut the heads off with a sharp knife at 45 degrees when the largest bud in the head is the size of a match head.  Wait much longer and you will lose some to flowering.
• After the main head has been cut, small florets will continue to grow along the main stalk as seen in the picture above.

Putting Up the Harvest:

• Freeze - wash and soak in salt water for 10 minutes to get rid of any bugs hiding in the recesses, rinse, steam blanch for 5 minutes, then freeze in an airtight container.  It will keep until your plants are producing again next year.
• Dehydrate - cut into 1/2" pieces, prepare as above including steam blanching, then dehydrate at 125 degrees for 8 hours.  Store in an airtight container out of direct sunlight.  It will store for years.