I love it when I try something new and different and it works out. That’s awesome! Who doesn’t love that?
This isn’t one of those stories.
When reading through descriptions on seed packets, in catalogs, and in comments on-line it is easy to get sucked into phrases like, “tastiest most vigorous broccoli in early spring”, “very sweet and tender.”, and “very flavorful”. Those are all great. But you have to pay attention to other phrases like, “This variety needs to overwinter”, if in fact you live in a place where sometimes… there is no winter.
Evidently our non-winter, did not qualify for “overwintering”.
So instead of the beautiful broccoli that I see here. I have this:
Actually these pictures are a little old. It is actually much bigger now. I would say at least three feet tall and a trunk (yes, trunk is the right word) at least two inches thick.
The good thing is that the chickens will love it. It’s time to plant for spring and I just don’t have the space to keep this resource hog around if it isn’t going to produce.
Lesson learned. If you live in the desert, where “winter” still affords you the opportunity to wear sandals and shorts, you probably want to avoid plants that need to “overwinter”.
The Jones Garden Blog 
Lol, oops. Was certainly a healthy looking specimen 😀
Thanks! You know it is a pretty plant. I hope the chickens appreciate that as they eat it. 🙂
Jones, my broccoli last year didn’t turn out well either. Plants were as tall as me with teeny tiny little florets on the massive plant. I suspect that my problem was to much nitrogen. My soil is naturally rich in nitrogen. I’m not planting any broccoli this year. Maybe I’ll perfect growing broccoli another year but this year I have some exciting plans that I want to experiment with.
Have a great day in the garden.
Sounds good, Dave. I always love to hear about a good experiment!
Hi Keith. I grew purple sprouting broccoli for the first time and it didn’t amount to much at all. There were sprouts, but they were so stubby that they were impossible to harvest – I guess the goats will end up with a tasty treat!
Cheers Sarah : o )
Yah… it looks really nice. Rave reviews. Oh well, there are tons of other things to grow.