Organic Broccoli: Early purple sprouting

Description

Organic Broccoli: Early purple sprouting. Brassica oleracea.

These seeds were grown to Demeter standard. They taste amazing, perhaps all the more because it’s ready April and you can continue cropping for about a month, picking out the main stem encourages side shoots, so in that way it was valuable over the hungry gap.

How to grow:
The plants get big, and they take about a year to grow. Start them off somewhere other than the final growing place, it can be a nursery bed, sow thinly in a drill and transplant when the height of your hand. Or sow in modules and plant out before they’re out growing the module size.

Problem solving:
Keep slugs and pigeons off them especially when small. The cabbage butterflies will love them come August, so covering with enviromesh, or something like it will save you picking off many little caterpillars.

Favourite ways to eat them:
The stems are every bit as nice as the flower head, so cut them long when harvesting. Lovely steamed drizzled with oil and salted. Great in a healthy stir fry.

Cultural history:
There are a few hypotheses around, although everyone seems to agree that its roots (excuse the pun) are in the Roman empire. Sprouting broccoli is reported to be a cross between large headed broccoli and Chinese broccoli.

Avg contents:  125 seeds.