Once you've established that your broccoli is ready, you take a sharp knife and slice the head off at it's neck, about 5 inches below the head itself (sounds a little grim, doesn't it?).
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Harvesting Broccoli
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, as part of the 2011 Growing Challenge, we are growing broccoli for the first time ever. Guess what? It worked! Today I got to harvest our very first broccoli from the garden!
I've learned that, to ensure that you're broccoli is ready for harvest, you need to look at at few things: Is the head 4-7 inches across? Is it nice and tight? Are the outside florets about the size of the head of a match?
Once you've established that your broccoli is ready, you take a sharp knife and slice the head off at it's neck, about 5 inches below the head itself (sounds a little grim, doesn't it?).
After you've harvested the head, you can start harvesting the side shoots (which are just tiny, individual heads that grow off the sides of the plant). That's it! Magic!
A few details: I planted my broccoli (direct sow) on July 17th , so that's not a bad turn around time! They're growing in our raised bed turned Wagon, so they are now protected from the elements. I started out with five plants and thinned them to three...I harvested 2 heads today, which leaves me with 1 head to still harvest, plus a few side shoots.
Once you've established that your broccoli is ready, you take a sharp knife and slice the head off at it's neck, about 5 inches below the head itself (sounds a little grim, doesn't it?).
4 comments:
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Looks wonderfuL!
ReplyDeleteAwesome, I love broccoli. can't wait to try and grow some next year :)
ReplyDeleteBroccoli?!?! I'm so jealous, we love that. If our house had been finished sooner, I might have gotten our gardens started. Oh well, next fall, I'll be posting (FINGERS CROSSED) about our harvest totals and I hope it's got some broccoli in it, LOL! Congrats :-)
ReplyDeleteAllison - Thank you!
ReplyDeleteKelly - Thanks! This was our first attempt!
1st man - YES!!! So far, so good! You will have your garden beds next season and they WILL produce! A word of advice...start slow. It can all feel overwhelming pretty quick :-) We don't even have very many beds and with work and life in general it sometimes feels like a lot. Super exciting, but a lot!