Fall broccoli has been one of my favorite crops this year.  I tossed the seeds into garden gaps in June and July, and all through August and September we ate the main heads that ripened at different times on different plants. 

Come October, all of the main heads were eaten up, but the plants started putting out small florets where the leaves attach to the main stem.  Since then, we've been eating one meal of broccoli per week from these small side heads --- they're perfect in an omelet with Egyptian onion tops and fresh mushrooms.

I've tried a lot of broccoli varieties and I think this one --- Packman Hybrid --- will definitely be our mainstay from now on.  Calabrese and Bonanza and Broccoli Raab never really grew for us, probably because of some microclimate condition on our farm.  It's worth noting that there are two kinds of broccoli --- ones like Packman that are bred to form a big single head and ones like Calabrese that are bred to sprout lots of small side florets.  In practice, though, Packman seems to manage both strategies quite well!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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