Now if you were smart enough to stagger your seed starting , you will have planted out every two or three weeks to extend your harvest..
Do consider starting some Broccoli seeds right now! for a fall harvest of this lovely plant! I will be starting new seeds for this today for my fall harvest.
The spring Broccoli is looking amazing, we started harvesting them last week and more are ready this week and I should also get a few more massive heads ready for next week and then the fresh harvest will be done on them till fall..
That’s a standard butcher knife, to till you a scale for the size of the heads at the moment, I am in push between letting them grow and keeping a eye on them twice a day to make sure they do not “bolt” or start to turn yellowish and flower out on me.. its fine balance between.. Grow.. grow! Harvest and darn it.. missed it..
Once in the house, I took the stems off and as they are still very tender, sliced them up and lightly salted and into the freezer in a tub they went for soup later in the season.. a hot bowl of thick broccoli and cheddar soup right now is not good for summer but it will be a delight for a cool fall night!
The leaves are big but edible.. I ribbed out the best leaves and into the dryer they go to then be ground down into my homemade “green powder” for later use.
The heads were taken apart.. in this photo you can see the full head, the first break down and then to the back and left side the finished florets.
At this point.. its very important to put them all into a salt cold water soak for 30 mins I put in one tbsp. of salt to my bowl of cold water.. As these are garden grown, its always a good idea to soak them and make sure if you have any hitchhikers, that you get them off.
The crazy amount of birds in my front yard have been busy hunting for bugs to feed their babies and so I have been so far very lucky and not had a single worm pop up yet to date.. but that is not the norm!
Do not just let them float in there. take a clean round plate that mostly fits your bowl and then weigh it down so that they are all under the water and set your baking timer and just let it go..
Once you are done that, you can check the water to see if you have any extra’s that need to be removed and ideally tossed to the chickens.. protein is protein 🙂 and you are now good to go into the fridge for future use in the kitchen or you are ready to blanch them/cool and then freeze them for later use.
Take the rest of the plant out of the ground and in my case I am feeding it to my sheep and or goats which will make quick work of it or it could be put into compost. I would consider chopping it up some before putting it in the compost and for sure on that if you did not harvest the leaves off of it.
So how has your broccoli been this garden season? did you get a good spring harvest? Will you be starting more seeds now to have a fall harvest?
Just another Day on the Farm 
So, you had no ‘hitchhikers’ then? (Yet another bonus from losing your trees out front; )
I have never had many ever no matter what garden I am in
Oh, well when you said “crazy amount of birds in my front yard have been busy hunting for bugs to feed their babies” I assumed you meant they were keeping things better than before…
I guess they are.. but I often find new garden area’s just have less pests then garden area’s that have been gardens for years.. plus you have to remember that hubby would “rescue hundreds of baby tadpoles and bring them up to be in the big gardens in their totes and then they would be everywhere in my gardens.. the same has happened in the front pond.. I mean we have to be careful where we put our feet and move slow at times to allow all the little wee hunters time to hop away from us.
I think they make the biggest difference to be honest.. I love my toads!
Your farm has gained so much by the sad loss of those trees.
strange but true.. but I am happy and grateful that I have Dear hubby.. what would I have if I did not have someone who understood that we would need to be willing to put up a 5 grand budget for this rebuild and who was willing to put in so many man hours work on these things.. I am truly blessed to have both hubby as a work mate but I am also blessed that I had that money to be able to do this rebuild..
I can never get my broccoli to grow bigger than a baseball. I don’t know how you do it.
hmmm. well I can put together a broccoli growing tip guide post.. I do certain things for them.. maybe it can help you grow bigger ones
Mine only get big if I grow them in the fall. I think we just get too hot too early here. Yours are beauties though!
Hi Maria.. I love Fall grown as well.. Its getting to hot for mine now as well. I will be harvesting the rest of them in the next week I expect.
We’ve hardly had any full-on sunny days this summer, not that I’m complaining, well, not too much anyway, so everything is coming up all leggy and only starting to flower now … the bees are happy though, so there’s that. 😀