[Market-farming] CSA Broccoli Question and Fall Planting Questions

cjmaness at juno.com cjmaness at juno.com
Mon Jun 15 22:52:49 EDT 2009


Allan,
I'm not sure what our broccoli weighed, since most of the weight comes from the stalk, and we don't cut with a lot of stock. We leave as much as possible to get the side shoots. We probably make more money off the side shoots than the whole head. No matter how many times we explain broccoli to our customers, they still think we sat up all night cutting up their broccoli for them! It's back breaking work though, snapping off all those little sprouts.
Our average head size was probably around 6- 6.5". In an earlier discussion about head size, someone (Bob?) mentioned that plant spacing would increase head size. We have always grown on 18" spacing, but our fall planting we will go 24" and see if we can get a larger head.

I think, if you over harden off broccoli it can "button" which is the small head size. I've never had that happen so I don't know for sure. I usually try and get mine out of the greenhouse a week before transplanting. Sometimes that works, other years they go straight from greenhouse to field. Honestly I don't know if it really makes that much difference. I think this year, with the rather extreme temperatures we kept having it probably helped to have hardened off plants. Out of the 2000 we put out, we maybe lost 3 to the cold. This year in particular convinced us that early is the way to go with broccoli.
We were picking our first broccoli on April 24th. With a market that opens April 1st, it was nice to have something to go with our asparagus and lettuce.
Carla
Perkins, OK

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