IT’S SURVIVED frost and snow, it’s been pecked to tatters by Pheasants but I’m afraid what finally did for one of our purple-flowering broccoli plants was the bonfire we lit yesterday afternoon near the the compost bins, just beyond the cabbage beds. I hope that two or three of the plants will recover sufficiently to give us a small supply of broccoli florets in a month or two.
We’ve found that you can’t be in a hurry when it comes to purple-flowering broccoli. We had no florets in the autumn when you might have expected a first crop. Ours always does better in the spring, which is good time to have it as there’s a bit of a lull in the supply of garden veg at that time. We did harvest kale and cabbage – both red and winter varieties – from this little cabbage patch in the autumn.
This spring, because of the rotation system we’re using, the cabbages and the potatoes that we grow alongside them will move onto the next bed in a clockwise direction, ousting the beans which will in turn move on to the bed where we grew root crops (and had a rare success with carrots last year) which in turn will move on to the bed where we grew the beans.