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Bring on the Broccoli!

Alan RomansSprouting broccoli features high on the list of good reasons for being a gardener, says Joyce Russell – to enjoy this delectable crop, you have to grow your own.

Varieties

Top toms

With the appearance of new varieties, sprouting broccoli can now be eaten from summer through to late spring. The most prolific producers are normally the spring ones that have had the benefit of a long growing season and so have developed into large plants. These will also have been touched by a frost to spur them into the production of flower-buds. Varieties that crop in the same year they are planted are not so hardy, and they have been bred to produce flowering spears without any cold stimulus.

Summer/autumn croppers:
• ‘Tendergreen’/‘Tenderstem’ D, DTB, T&M. This green sprouting variety is the one you might just see in a supermarket. It can be sown under cover in February, or outdoors in March and April.
• ‘Bordeaux’ DTB, OGC (o), T&M. You can sow this from March to June and harvest it from July to November. As an experiment, I sowed it under cover in early July and it produced spears the following January – not a huge crop, but delicious all the same!
• ‘Spike’ K, OGC, SH. This is a purple variety that crops four to five months after sowing.
Winter croppers:
• ‘Extra Early Rudolph’ D, DTB, OGC, T&M. This is a purple variety, cropping from January onwards.
• ‘Early Purple Sprouting’ OGC (o), SH (o). This crops from early February to March.
Spring croppers:
• ‘Claret’ DTB, OGC. This is my all-time favourite heavy cropper, producing purple spears from March to May.
Unusual varieties:
• ‘Nine Star Perennial’ K, OGC, SH, T&M produces clusters of small white heads. ‘Romanesco’ K, OGC, SH, T&M forms a cluster of heads in a single cone. Both of these are a bit closer to cauliflower than broccoli in my book.

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If there was a popular vote on vegetables, I wonder what would come top of the list? Carrots, maybe, or peas, which can be bought in a bag and poured out with no mess at all.

This set me thinking. As vegetable growers we can sample the freshest and best of everything – not just commercial varieties that are grown for fast production and uniformity, with flavour often an afterthought. If we want we can freeze and bottle as well, but we also get to taste everything at its perfect best.

Now I’m not sure what my number one vegetable would be, although I could certainly narrow the list down to five or six hot contenders. What struck me, however, is that one of my shortlist is something that a veg grower can delight in, whereas the casual shopper may well not find it on the shelves. It certainly wouldn’t figure in a popular vote, because most people haven’t eaten it. I’m not talking about a rare exotic here. The veg in question is sprouting broccoli. It is extremely hardy and easy to grow; it is ready for picking when few vegetables are; it is truly delicious; and it beats its cousin calabrese hands down.

The reason it isn’t a good commercial crop is that it takes a long time to reach maturity and loses quality quite rapidly after picking. It is also more fiddly to harvest than a single head of calabrese or a cauliflower, which are the closest alternatives. However, you can ignore these problems if you grow your own, and enjoy the wonderful benefits instead!

Sprouting broccoli is full of antioxidants, which have been proved to help prevent cancer. It is also bursting with vitamins C, K and A, as well as having useful amounts of iron, omega-3, calcium and the B vitamins. There are few vegetables that are as power-packed as broccoli.

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