The story of broccoli

Early Aprl: Seedlings

Late April: Growing up!

May 15: Planting out

May 30: Explosive growth

Early June: a curd appears ...

 

... and the neighbours are eaten!

Mid-June: Obvious curd is obvious ...

... and the plant is about a foot tall

A week later, and the curd is ping-pong ball sized

June 22: Baseball-sized. Probably should have harvested at this point

June 25: Whoops! Flower buds haven't opened yet ...

... but the plant is obviously bolting

July 1: Canada Day fireworks

July 4: Flower buds continue to open

All sorts of pollinators visit. The smaller ones are easier to photograph ...

... but I spend a couple of days chasing down a pic of the big fat camera-shy bumbles

The haze of pollinators around the broccoli flowers and the flowers themselves are happy-making ...

... but the plant is taking up valuable real estate from the fall crop of carrots and beets. Buh bye!

Overall, growing broccoli was fun but, except for the petite Purple Peacock variety that you see in the last picture, not practical for a balcony garden situation. I'm more than willing to swap the remaining seeds (they're the Di Cicco variety, from Sage Garden Herbs) for more space-efficient veggies (leafy greens like guy lan or root plants like small carrots, beets, radishes).

An 800 pound gorilla and its showy, svelte friend

The Di Cicco broccoli is developing a head and taking over cedar planter number 2. Also in the same planter but obscured by this monster is, believe it or not, Purple Peacock broccoli, and Red Russian and Dinosaur kale. Stunning how big they've become since planting out in mid-May. Lesson learned: Di Cicco is not space-efficient!

Purple Peacock, on the other hand, seems like an ideal broccoli to grow when you're short on space and I'm beginning to understand why Linda from Tree and Twig Farm sent me these seeds. Not only are the showy purple-veined leaves attractive (as you can infer from this picture of it as a seedling), they're also edible (it is a broccoli-kale cross)! Best of all, the plant itself is petite - maybe a third of the size of the monster Di Cicco. Perfect for balcony container gardening!

Sadly, I have no good pictures of this small-space gem but I'll make sure to post any in the fall if I can squeeze in a second crop.

Snowdrop and winter aconite mystery, more planting out

I had planted snowdrop bulbs and winter aconite corms in cedar planter #2 last fall in hopes of seeing a nice display this spring, but the thaw has come and gone I saw nothing but weeds emerge from the soil.

Curiousity got the better of me today and I dug up the contents of the planter only to find that the corms were still bare, hard little marbles, and the bulbs were mushy with no signs of shoots or roots.

I’m not sure why neither bulb nor corm got established, although I strongly suspect that the medium was perhaps a little too heavy for their liking and what roots they did send out in the fall rotted off. Or perhaps it was too cold for them to overwinter in a balcony container, despite mulching them amply.

I have way too many veggie starts for the amount of available planters on my back balcony, so I planted out the remainder of the kale, broccoli, and bok choi in cedar planter #2 after digging in 1/3 cup of dried chicken manure.

I don’t recall what I put in the planter as substrate, but when these veggies mature, I’ll probably end up amending the medium with lots of perlite to lighten it up.

Planting out in the back balcony

The vegetable seedlings hardening off on the front balcony have been getting unreasonably large in their solo cups over the past couple of weeks while I’ve procrastinated on planting them out. I finally went to the Home Despot this morning to gather the necessary supplies.

Each container was filled with Berger BM-1 all-purpose mix (suprisingly cheaper per unit volume than Miracle Gro potting mix) and amended with vermiculite (~ 4 litres for the big containers) and dolomitic lime (~2 cups for the big containers). 1/3 cups of dehydrated chicken manure was mixed into the top 6 inches or so of the mix.

The containers seemed huge when I picked them up through Freecycle, but now that they've been planted, they all seem a little crowded. There's four broccolis (two each of Di Cicco and Purple Peacock) in the 16" container on the left; a bok choi, two Red Russian kales, and a Wakefield cabbage in the middle 19" container; and an orach, a collard, and a Dino kale in the 12" container on the right.

Between the fancy new medium that I made, the crowding, the lack of sun on the balcony (it probably gets 3 or 4 hours of morning sun), and the squirrels and neighbour’s rat-dog that live back there, I’m not sure how the veggies will do. I’m hopeful, though.

I was going to plant out the spinach too - I eat lots and it's the primary reason for this veggie patch - but upon closer inspection, it appears that all of my starts have bolted already. I'm not sure why this would be since it's been cool and wet for most of the spring. Could it be because they are a little rootbound?

Moonflower craziness, seedlings + lithops

I don't know why I was so shocked yesterday when I saw that my moonflower seeds had exploded into growth only 4 short days after planting given what happened last time but I was. This time around, I think I got the moisture level right because there's no white mold. Hopefully, they don't turn purple or get eaten by bugs.

Moonflower top growth

Moonflower bottom growth

Speaking of getting eaten by bugs, here's what nice and healthy bug-free bok choy looks like. Beautiful, isn't it?

In fact, all of my second generation (for 2011) seedlings are pretty healthy looking, although some of the older parts of the stems growth on the orachs and brassicas look a little skinny and weak compared to the newer growth (i.e., thinner at the bottom of the stem than at the top). The transition between skinny and fat at the node where the seed leaves grew from. This could probably be corrected by growing them next time at lower temperatures and with the lights a bit closer after germination.

Second gen seedlings 2011

Di Cicco Broccoli

Red orach

Orach

As for my lithops, they all seem to be doing interesting things. There are nice plump lithops and then there are wrinkly-looking guys. Some are changing colours, others are retreating into the ground, and yet others ... are they supposed to look like that?

Is this normal?

More purple peacock broccoli

Such a cool little seedling! I got the seeds as part of Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm's seed giveaway in November.

Cotyledon closeup

Peacock tail

Neat seedlings and their true leaves

Purple Peacock Broccoli

Red Russian Kale

Red Gem Marigold

French Marigold