It's Baaaaack!

Those darling little purple florets have just appeared.

On the way to the woodpile I passed by the raised beds and was astonished to see Purple Sprouting Broccoli florets! It's barely April and my PSB is putting forth vast amounts of edible purple yumminess. What's really surprising is the fact that it's producing those florets on close to 3 year old stalks.

Granted, this is a variety that takes around 8 months to start producing in the first place. However, I planted the seeds in late April of 2010 and the first summer I got nothing but a thicket of 6 foot tall stalks with 2 foot long leaves that took over the entire 8 ft. by 4 ft. bed. As it turns out, this is an heirloom variety that one should plant in the fall so 8 months later you can theoretically harvest something in late summer. After discovering my oops, I overwintered the bunch but only 3 stalks made to spring. PSB is supposed to be very frost hardy, but these 3 plants survived that early big freeze we had in the fall of 2010. The next spring, those plants exploded and I had so much PSB that a lot of it flowered and ended up in the compost pile because I couldn't keep up with it. I assumed that the mass production were the plants death throws to reproduce before they droop dead. How wrong I was! The plants overwintered a second time and this year, they're producing earlier than ever only this time, I'm determined to nip this in the bud before it all gets out of control. I'll probably freeze a lot of it.

This is a great time of spring for the PSB to be putting out because it's too cold for those pesky cabbage moths and the leaves are pristine. The florets and younger leaves are also very sweet. Maybe several years of the freeze/thaw cycle has increased the sweetness. Sugars are a plant's anti-freeze and there's nothing like a frost to bring out sweetness in Brassicas. I'm chopping up and steaming the smaller leaves and the florets together.

Purple Sprouting Broccoli's culinary origins happen to go way back to the Romans who first cultivated it. Marcus Gavius Apicius, a celebrity chef of the Roman Empire, created one of the earliest known recipe books that called for broccoli to be mixed with cumin, coriander seeds, chopped onions, oil and wine. Hmmm, I wonder where I can get a copy.
 
Although the Brits have been growing PSB for at least the last 2 centuries, it's just starting to become more common in this country. In the UK, PSB's season is January to May. Here, it appears to be late March to when you're sick of it and let it go to seed. It's definitely a space hog and you can't expect an abundance of large big-box style florets. Visualize the shrunken heads on grown bodies in the movie Beettlejuice and you'll get an idea of the proportions of the florets to the overall plant.

I'm contemplating contacting Guiness World Records when it hits year 10 to enter it as the longest living single crop of Purple Sprouting Broccoli. I'll have to see what the current record is. I could see myself getting as obsessed as those giant pumpkin growers get, sitting up all night to keep the varmints from snacking on my charges and monitoring the plants with an IV.

My guess is that some Darwinian PSB mutation is happening with mine. Or maybe I'm not so quick to whack them down after the growing season. Much to Roland's eye-rolling, I've decided to see how long I can keep these PSB anomalies going before they finally peter out. More bang for the buck that way too. My $3 packet of seeds has gone a long way and I haven't used much fertilizer either. Who knows, this region's predictive climatic transitions to warmer and wetter might just be the ticket to the development of a new cultivar. How does Brassica oleracea 'Debra's Floret Folly' sound? I just love freakish plants, don't you?

Broccoli, Broccoli Everywhere and Not a Flower Head to Eat!

Note to self: Read the packet of seeds carefully and double check another source before planting.

This last Spring, I was going through the packets of seeds at Lowes (I know, I know) and gravitated towards this variety called 'Purple Sprouting' broccoli. I was drawn to the pretty color displayed on the front of the packet and the fact that it was a sprouting variety, not the blobby type heads you see in the grocery store. More like purple rapeseed. So, I grabbed a packet or 2 thinking of wonderful, yummy purple food this summer. I enthusiastically planted a butt load of the seeds in one of the raised beds. It was rather slow to get going, but I chalked that up to the cold Spring we were having.

Well, when I did a plant list for my Spring Culinary Gardening class, I actually read the packet more thoroughly. Good ol' Ed Hume said that this variety takes 120 days to maturity. "Hmmm", I thought, "That takes it into the Fall before I can harvest any of it. Well, I dutifully put the Reemay over the top of the young plants to keep them safe from the white flutter-byes (after picking off a bowl full of little, yellow eggs - so I'm slow to react) and watched them slowly take hold, holes in the leaves and all.

When it finally warmed up, caboom! Now it's July and the stuff is 30" tall, lush with vegetation and no flower heads yet! Not even a hint. Just more leaves coming up the middle. Roland asked, "When are we supposed to harvest this stuff? It's taking up a whole bed!"

I said, "Ed Hume says 120 days. Let me look it up in one of my gardening guides."

240 DAYS?! 8 months! How could ol' Ed have it so wrong? Who the hell plants broccoli (besides, apparently I) that putzes along for 8 months? I guess that's why you plant it for the bleak of winter 'cause nothing much else takes much space other than other cabbages, carrots, garlic, fava beans, lettuce, spinach, beets, etc., etc. I mean, how many crops do you need, really?

So, I brought this up in my summer Culinary Gardening class and teacher Gayle told me, "That's a variety that usually gets planted for overwintering (neener, neener, neener)." And there it was, 'Purple Sprouting' on their PowerPoint list of veg to overwinter in today's class (neener, neener, neener).

I don't mind being the class example, but usually it's for having done something well, so if having broccoli that looks like it's radioactive (sterile), I've certainly done that. I've given up on perfectionism long ago, and now call it 'excelling'. Besides, I figure it's good to be remembered for something extraordinary like successfully over-summering overwintering broccoli.

When we were planting seeds for new starts for the colleges' garden today, teacher Anne relished the idea to give me the packet of Purple Sprouting broccoli (neener, neener, neener). So, for Christmas, I'm sending them each a head of Purple Sprouting broccoli fresh out of my veg garden.