Broccolli Question

[OverWyreGrower]

After everything being totally dormant for weeks due to rain, I came back from my Beginners Poultry course yesterday too find flowers on my (green) broccolli.

Is this bad? I am sure that I should pick it before it flowers, has it now bolted?

[SarzWix]

The heads/florets on broccoli/calabrese do open up into flowers if you don't cut them soon enough. Loads of my over-wintered Purple Sprouting did that in spring. It seems to happen in a blink sometimes - not ready one minute, flowering the next...and the sun shone for 10 mins yesterday so that's prob what did it! You could leave it to look pretty and be a sacrifice to the cabbage whites, or pull it up and use the space for something else.

[zazen999]

Hi.
I found that if you cut the flowered bits off, and leave it then you should get another crop; albeit from side shoots. We ate for several months last year from the same plants, just cutting it daily. Those that flower can be used in soups anyway; so don't throw them out.
Of course, i don't know which variety you are talking about, so am assuming that you mean the brocolli which has one head in the middle, which is actually calabrese - rather than purple sprouting brocolli [which is real brocolli].

The best thing to do [for future reference] is to sow a few at a time, every few weeks. Then you get a longer crop with no glut. Of course, this year even doing that is useless, as the ones soen earlier have slowed down with the terrible weather and the later ones have definitely caught up.