The leaves tasted terrible raw. Very bitter is the best I can describe. They look a whole lot like turnip leaves, but these are smooth instead of hairy. You can see in the 2nd pot pic from above, there IS a broccoli growing next to the cut off leaves. These were soil blocks with four seeds per block. That broccoli plant must have germinated very late out of the block, long after the block itself was planted in that pot. I do remember being quite proud of myself for getting this seed germinated so quickly. No heat mat, under lights only in the basement. Multiple sprouts in each block after just a couple days, AND I managed to keep them from growing super leggy. That is just how awesome I am at starting seeds! Or so I thought!
These came up quickly, but it was very late to start broccoli (Mar 25th) and basically I sprouted them under lights and put them out the next day. I honestly never really thought about them much and when I was working that area of the bed, it was for weeds only and deciding which of these to cull one at a time.
Next year I will plan on broccoli from the start and focus on good strong transplants. The day after I planted these I found a thread here on tomatoville about "planting in a 3/4" hole". Between that, and actual broccoli seeds, I should be golden. Right?
I took more pics the other day. It was not just four pots, it was a good chunk of raised bed as well. I was not going to post them, but now I will UPLOAD MY FAILURE. Maybe they will help you figure it out. They were coming along nicely! One them even had half a leave eaten off...probably a groundhog that spit it out immediately. You can see in pic 6 and pic 8 there is a boatload of turnip growing there for leaf harvest and then thinning; the leaves look very similar, but feel much different.
But it is all moot, now.
Yesterday I pulled those impostors, wiped out the inter-spaced spinach and volunteer tomatillos, laid down the black woven mat I bought this winter, burned a grid of holes with torch, picked it back up and ran drip tape, and finally threw my eggplant in there. Seventeen Epic eggplant in a 3 wide diamond with I want to say 18" spacing. Well, three of those are actually planted in the spinach rows, I didn't see a reason to wipe that spinach out, yet. I will weave the eggplant as I have been for the last few years. I had been trying to figure out where to put these eggplant, so in way, everything worked out fine. Except, no broccoli this summer, save that late one little guy...perhaps the only actual broccoli seed in four entire packs.
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