Broccoli. I want to be its friend. I don’t want to fight with it, but as my broccoli harvesting season comes to an end, I am battling with this stuff tooth and claw. I try to understand broccoli. What does it need? What does it want? What is its . . . motivation? Here is where the battle begins. Broccoli wants to make seeds. Its sole motivating purpose is to set a bunch of seeds in pointy pods on tall spindly stems that come shooting up from the middle of the plant. And this is the root of our conflict. Broccoli and I, we are at cross purposes. I want broccoli to STOP when it has formed its nice big head of flower buds, to stop there and not go on with the seed-making process, not go on to fulfill its destiny and bloom.
My own sole motivating purpose is to harvest a nice big heavy head of tightly packed broccoli flower buds. That is what we are eating when we eat broccoli – the tender, delicious flower bud. You see, I am growing a market garden. I provide veggies to nearby families who have subscribed to my “Sunshine for Dinner – The Farmer’s Market that comes to you.” service. Every other week, I show up on my customer’s doorstep with a big bag of homegrown veggies, and I want them to be delighted when they unpack that bag. In order for that to happen at this time of year, I need broccoli. In the summertime, it is all about tomatoes, but in the earliest months, broccoli is about the only wow-factor I can provide. The cool weather garden is full of leaves – lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, bok choy, mustard, turnip greens, collard greens, arugula. Delicious leaves, but leaves nonetheless. That can get a little boring. I need to provide my customers with something besides leaves in their veggie bag. Broccoli always makes them smile. Broccoli, however, has only one thing on its mind: making seeds. It does not care about my needs at all.So, broccoli and I go head-to-head. Broccoli is tricky. I start out being nice to it. I try to gain its cooperation. I plant it in a comfy covered hoop house. I give it a nice bed to grow in, full of compost. I give it plenty of space – broccoli is BIG.
A plant can easily grow to four feet across. I water it and weed it. But this year, right from the start, it fought me. It started putting on heads when the plants were only about a foot tall. That tiny stalk and puny leaves could never support the lush heavy heads of broccoli that I need so my veggie-loving foodies will smile when they unpack their Sunshine for Dinner bag. Frown.This is the tricky part. When what the plant wants (to make seeds) is the same as what we want (to harvest ripe fruit) then things are great. We work together to that end, because the seeds it wants to make are conveniently within the ripe fruit we want to harvest. The tomato. The apple. The blueberry. The eggplant. The pepper. Perfect. Or consider the leaves that I mentioned before. Lettuce. Chard. I fully support their leaf growing habits. I enable. I am in total peaceful accord with the easiest crops that just grow leaves. Like my dear friend, kale. It is happy to keep growing leaves for a year and a half before it wants to make any seeds. Eighteen long glorious months when I have no responsibilities besides starting a sprinkler every now and then when it doesn’t rain. I can just lay in a hammock while the kale grows, rousing myself once a week to pluck off leaves to bring the doors of my customers and fill the standing order at the health food store, so the people of Texarkana can buy kale to juice and make salads and add to green smoothies. Everybody’s happy! Alright, maybe the hammock thing is a bit of fiction, but it remains that we can join with these vegetable plants in common purpose. It’s easy! We help them achieve their goal. We revel, together, in the bounty of the summer garden. Leaves and luscious ripe fruit.
But not broccoli. Poor broccoli. We have an adversarial relationship. Just at the moment its buds are perfectly formed and it is ready to burst into glorious flower, BAM! Well, more like, WHACK! There I am with the knife. It worked so hard to make this huge (I hope it is huge, anyway) head of tight blossom buds, to create a thick sturdy stem for support, to grow a beautiful rosette of tremendous leaves for harvesting the sun’s energy, all to fuel this process – its purpose in life – to make its seeds. WHACK. Into my basket. I strike the first blow in our battle. For that one plant, in our first confrontation, I win this round. But behind me, 70 other plants are quietly growing.
At this point, the only thing I have on my side is the knife. Broccoli has all the tactical advantages. The weather is on its side. Longer days. More sun. Warmer soil. All sending messages to the plant – stretch! Don’t just sit there in a nice tight head anymore, the time is NOW! The pollinators are here! Do you hear them buzzing? Quick! Stretch! And a plant hormone starts to flow, telling the stems growing between the many tiny flower buds in its nice tight head to start to grow and lengthen. While I am not watching, the stems stretch and bloom and reach up. Broccoli never rests. It never sleeps. It never watches TV or cooks dinner or goes away from home to work. It is relentless. It keeps growing. Inside the buds, yellow flowers are forming.
I have a market garden – I sell broccoli, so I need it to be perfect on a certain day of the week. Monday is the delivery day for Sunshine for Dinner. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I am there with my knife. Even as I harvest, it is growing. I am almost afraid to turn my back on it. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it is growing. Each head is changing as fast as it can into a giant bouquet of yellow flowers. Can I make it slow down?
I try. I cut the heads that are starting to stretch and not looking so pretty. The kind that would give my customers a puzzled expression instead of a smile. “What the heck is this? The tag said there would be broccoli in this bag. Where is it?” My family eats them, the culls. When I cut off a central head of broccoli, whether it is perfect or a little loose, the feedback system in the plant is interrupted. Whatever was telling it, “Our buds are formed and perfect, now STRETCH!” is abruptly gone. That head of buds is no longer sending its message, it is in my harvest basket. The plant, I hope, resets into “make buds” mode. Now we are in phase two of the battle.
On the left, the plant is still making buds. It is compact with large leaves. On the right, the plant has entered “seed mode.” It has smaller leaves and its buds have stretched up and bloomed. The central head is gone, but the broccoli plant also makes buds all up and down the stem. Where each leaf is attached, a group of cells starts to grow in response to the “make buds!” order. I can get broccoli to produce a whole new set of smaller but still smile-producing heads. I watch the plants to see which ones have already beaten me by passing completely into seed mode. These plants are growing smaller leaves. They are not putting their energy into making more buds. They are DONE! It is seeds or nothing for them. Poor things, they don’t get the satisfaction of finally ripening their seeds – I pull them up and toss them to the chickens.
One by one, despite my efforts, the plants move into seed mode. It is inevitable. It happens around me, one day as I am hunting among the few big squat leafy plants still giving me some small buds, I find myself surrounded by fluttering spires of yellow flowers and buzzing bees. Time for broccoli to go. The dramatic pulling up of spent broccoli plants commences and the chickens feast on them and I think, I wish I had some pigs to feed this to. Sigh. The broccoli goes gentle into that good night.
Their space is needed in the garden. Things that bear fruit need to be planted. I have other smile-inducing produce to add to the bags for now. Under the leaves, my customers find new potatoes. Big smiles. They were tired of broccoli, anyway.
Georgiaberry Mobley grows broccoli and other veggies in her hometown, Fouke, Arkansas. Since 2007, she and her husband, Kandan, have been selling their locally grown food in the Texarkana area through their Sunshine for Dinner subscription veggie delivery service. It’s the farmer’s market that comes to you! In her spare time, she teaches their two kids at home, is an active La Leche League leader, and helps out with their landscape design/maintenance firm. Find out more about her market garden and farm life, and how to sign up for Sunshine for Dinner at http://www.SunshineForDinner.com. Join the conversation on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SunshineforDinner. You can also find Georgiaberry on pinterest at http://www.pinterest.com/georgiaberry/ and Instagram at http://instagram.com/georgiaberrym.
When asked about edible flowers, broccoli is the first one that enters my mind. It is the best of all possible worlds. It’s buds are deliciously edible and nutritious and its flowers are pretty (in a red checkered tablecloth sort of way).
Great point about the edible flowers! And they are pretty – I love the flowers of the vegetable garden.
This was TOO MUCH FUN. Thank you. 🙂
Glad you enjoyed it, Alison!
I don’t think any of us will ever think of broccoli in the same way again:)
I have never before considered what might “motivate” broccoli. My mind is now opened to thinking about broccoli in a new and interesting way! This manages to educate and entertain simultaneously, which makes for great reading!
I really enjoyed reading this! I just blogged about starting my own small herb garden, which is much more low key than this. 😉
I included a link back here in case anyone wants to hear about some real gardening drama. 🙂 You can see it here: http://blog.sarahshotts.com
Don’t let the herbs fool you, Sarah. Chives are devious about spreading their seeds, and oregano will soon be in every nook and cranny. Keep you eye on them!
And thanks for the shout-out on your blog. I really appreciate it.
Wonderful post! I love broccoli but have never tried growing it. Yet.