How to Save Money and Grow Healthy Organic Broccoli
Filed under Organic Vegetable Gardening
Though the market for organics has grown tremendously in recent years, broccoli is among the vegetables most often purchased organic by consumers in North America. Given the way the price of all produce has gone up in the last few years, more and more people have decided to try growing their own organic broccoli. Doing so can save a considerable amount of money if you have the space to do so.
As a brassica, broccoli is a cool-season crop, very closely related to the other cole crops of cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, collards and several others. As such, it is able to be grown as both a summer and a winter crop in many areas. Developed in Italy, it was brought to United States by immigrants and quickly became a very popular vegetable worldwide.
When planting as a summer crop, it is usually best to start broccoli indoors, though it can also be planted directly. Broccoli seeds, unlike many others, can germinate in relatively cool temperatures as low as 50F (10C). Many growers get a jump on the season by starting transplants several weeks before the last frost date.
Most varieties of broccoli that are available are hybrid varieties that have been bred for size and growth characteristics that allow crop to be uniformly harvested by machines. A good variety will have a rounded head that doesn’t collect water on developing florets and plenty of side shoot production.
In addition, broccoli comes in two general forms, one that forms a single large central floret and a raab type that makes a great many small florets. Whichever you choose, their cultivation is identical. Both are rather heavy feeders, requiring a rather large amount of compost to be added to the soil.
If you haven’t done so already, it’s always a good idea to get your soil tested for pH and nutrients. Broccoli is tolerant of rather acidic soils, though it prefers a soil pH between 6 and 7. If you have a rather high incidence of club root in your soil, raising the pH to above 7.3 can help prevent it from developing.
Aphids are a particularly nasty pest, though they can easily be defeated by spraying with an insecticidal solution made from the Indian neem tree. It will kill existing aphids dead and prevent the spread of disease form other broccoli plants. Other ways to keep insects from destroying your developing broccoli plants is to cover the heads in a protective layer of Remay.
Another trick used by many organic gardeners is to use a long rotation cycle that allows the soil to rest anywhere from three to five years without planting any of the other brassica crops. One may also use a trap row of broccoli that is allowed to go to flower, drawing in pollinator insects and trapping aphids and other stylet insects in that decoy row.
Plan on planting anywhere between 5 and 10 plants for each person in your household. Since the broccoli plants can get up to 3 feet across, this can represent a fairly large amount of real estate, especially in a small garden. However, if you don’t give the plants plenty of room, they won’t form a very large head. It’s better to thin the plants out so they have plenty of room to get big.
Be sure to harvest the heads before they begin to actually flower, while at the same time allowing the heads to get as close to flowering as possible. After harvesting the main head, additional side shoots will continue developing for a few more months, though they’ll never get quite as big as the central flower.
As for nutrition, It’s usually a good idea to side-dress the plants with a side-dressing of organic fertilizer of high quality compost to add organic matter and nutrition to the soil. It is not often necessary to add sulfur to the soil, some soils can be seriously lacking in this critical element, and it should be added in one form or another. Elemental sulfur is also useful in smoking out rodents and other vertebrates that are attracted to broccoli.
Mulch is a handy ally when growing organic broccoli, not only to keep weeds down, but also to keep the roots cool and conserve water. Unlike many summer crops, broccoli isn’t prone to powdery mildew. Though you can get away with watering from above over any patch of brassicas, water applications that get the leaves wet during the day can cause sun-scald, turning the leaves brown.
Broccoli can be rather expensive when purchased at the grocery store, especially if you use it on a regular basis. With careful and staggered plantings, you can have broccoli almost throughout the entire year.
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