Recipe For Broccoli In Your Vegetable Garden

We are still learning new recipes for broccoli though we’ve been growing them for years. The secret to making broccoli feel at home in your vegetable garden is planting the right variety at the right time.

In spring, look for ones like “Arcadia”, “Green Comet”. They grow fast and can take some heat as harvesting time approaches. And,

In midsummer, when you plant your fall crops, go with one that can put up with high temperatures. “Green Jewel” is one of the best.

Color is key when choosing broccoli. The greener the broccoli is, the more beta-carotene — an important antioxidant — it has. Look for broccoli that’s dark green or even purplish-green, but not yellow. Florets should be compact and of even color; leaves should not be wilted; and stalks should not be fat and woody.

When buying broccoli at the grocery store, most folks choose the largest heads they can get. But those in the know also enjoy the smaller, more tender side-shoots they can get from their home-grown broccoli.

Here are some of our favorite tricks for boosting these super-tasty shoots:

• After harvesting the large central head, don’t pull out your plants! Over the next few weeks, you’ll get a second harvest of small new shoots that pop up from the remaining stem.
• Some folks like to spread their broccoli plants out 18 to 24 inches apart, and that’s fine if your objective is big main heads. But we’ve discovered that setting out our plants just 8 inches apart is a much better bet – the central heads are smaller, but the side-shoot population absolutely explodes, giving us a much bigger harvest overall!
• Don’t care about the central head at all?  Choose varieties described as “sprouting” types. They produce many small clusters of buds that you can harvest all summer long.

Just like people, broccoli needs lots of calcium to grow big and strong. So if your plants look weak and aren’t producing well, try mixing some crushed eggshells into the soil around the base of each plant. This’ll give them a good nutrient boost and help get them back on the right track!

Want to know more super growing secrets & recipes for broccoli?

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Yours truly for a great garden with berries,veggies and flowers.

Polly-organic gardener