How I Grow and Harvest MASSIVE Broccoli From My Garden

Welcome back to Jacques in the Garden, where today I am going to be harvesting broccoli. As you guys can see, I've been growing some massive heads of broccoli. We're going to be filling this entire tray without a problem, but not only that, I'm also going to be sharing some of the things that I've learned when it comes to growing broccoli. Because I'm not just growing heading broccoli, I also have this beautiful burgundy sprouting broccoli. I have a bunch of broccolini in the other garden as well. So I'm going to show you how to harvest, what to look for, and also what I've learned and how to get these huge, massive yields of broccoli. So before we go crazy on the harvesting of these ridiculously sized heads of broccoli, oh my god, these are so big. What I want to do is give you some background context on this bed. First of all, it is a 4x8 Epic Raise bed, and this has been in my garden now for about three years. And when I say three years, it's actually the third year coming up right now. And what I grew in this bed this past summer was basically mostly just the terminate tomatoes. And it did okay. It wasn't the best performance out of this bed, I have to admit. So what did I do about it? Well, I refreshed the bed. I noticed that it felt a little bit dry, like it was draining too quickly. So I added a lot of compost. I also added some azomite to give it some minerals back. I put in a healthy, heavy dose of organic-based fertilizer. Not only that, but I also put in some of that crab shell meal, which has extra kind. It breaks down really quickly, gives plenty of nitrogen to these plants. And when you're talking about something like broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower, the main thing that they're doing is producing leaves. And what do leaves need? They need nitrogen. So at the beginning of your growing cycle, you want to make sure you have some quick-release nitrogen available in your soil. Organic stuff like blood meal or even shrimp meal are really good at fast-acting nitrogen. And after that, you really need some of that potassium and also the phosphorus. The N is the nitrogen, the P and the K is the potassium and phosphorus. Those are the ones that help develop these big roots that allow you to get these really large heads of broccoli. Now the other thing that those nutrients do is that they help promote branching. More on that later because I have some examples of burgundy and broccolini and how well they branch. So now let's talk about harvesting when it comes to these heads and crowns of broccoli. All right guys, so here is the broccoli. Let's take a look at the anatomy and understand how it's growing and why we want to harvest it a specific way. First of all, big head needs a lot of leaves. So you're not going to see a head this large unless you have the leaf mass to support it. That is why nitrogen is so important at the beginning of its growing cycle. So where do we harvest this to maximize our harvest? Because if you don't know, I'll talk more about this in a moment, but broccoli isn't done when you harvest the head. It will continue to produce for basically until it gets too hot and it sends up a bolt or a flower. And what that means is that I will get not only this head of broccoli, but I'll probably get the equivalent weight of like three more of these by the time this plant gives up growing. So if we take a look at the side view, you'll see that some of the leaves closer to the top of the crown are a little bit small and then there's these bigger fan leaves. So when I harvest this, I want to come down to probably at least two sets of these larger leaves and I'm going to be cutting it like right here. That way I'm removing all that top stem, which for sure is going to be connected to some of these leaves. But at the same time, I'm leaving all these new side shoots like this one here to continue growing. And guess what this has? It already has a little head of broccoli and that's not the only side shoot. There's another one right there and they're wrapped all around this plant. So let me get my pruners out. These are probably a little bit too small for this ridiculous size of broccoli, but what we're going to do here is just come in and we're going to cut it right about there. So in this case, my pruners couldn't even get around it. So I pre-cut it and then snapped it off. And would you look at that? Now that is a nice head of broccoli. So this is just one of the heads that I showed you guys. Of course, there are two more like this size. So let me show you the structure of the plant now that I've harvested it and then we'll harvest the last two before moving on to the different types of broccoli that I'm growing in my garden. So as you guys could see, this is where I just cut it. Here's one of those side shoots that will soon develop into forming a new broccoli. And what do those side shoot broccolis look like? Well, funny that you asked because I have plenty of examples to show you. So I'm now standing on the opposite end of this bed where I harvested a head of broccoli, oh, about two weeks ago, if I had to guess, maybe just one week. And let's take a look inside. This is a side shoot. This is a side shoot. Here's the central stem where you could see I cut it and harvested the original head. Another side shoot there. Another side shoot there. Down there. And then there's a couple bigger ones down below on this side. So all of these will continue to size for a little bit more time. If I continue down into the other part of my garden to this bed, these were the first heads of broccoli that I harvested. And this is the kind of side shoot production that we're talking about. This is a pretty good size little head of broccoli. And this is just a bonus harvest from something we already took the main harvest from. And another example of it is right here. Another nice side little, let me just snap that off. There we go. This is a nice little size side shoot. This is the kind of stuff you can continue to get from your broccoli plants if you do not remove the entire plant once you harvest that first crown. So now let's harvest the second massive head. This time I'm going to be using a knife so I can try to get a clean cut all the way down the stem. That is so big guys. And also, by the way, any broccoli plant or really any brassica plant, you can eat these greens and they're actually pretty decent. Especially if you don't have like some collards or something you want to throw in your soups or stews. Broccoli leaves, fantastic. They also saute up great and they taste pretty dang good. And now it's time for broccoli head number three. Before we move on to sprouting broccoli, because I have a lot of the beautiful burgundy broccoli to show you guys as well. But first, we got to see how big this guy is. This thing is definitely bigger than my head. It's incredible. All right, let's add that second ridiculous head of broccoli in. And coming in with that side shoot we harvested. And as you can see, it's definitely not as big as the main head, but this is just one side shoot. And the cool thing is, is that these will be spaced out over weeks. So we'll get a nice continuous flow of broccoli instead of all these massive heads at once. And finally, broccoli number three. So before we move on to the burgundy broccoli, I did want to show you guys an example of a tighter head and one where I would harvest it at this point. So what I'm looking at here, the main distinguishing feature are these cracks between the florets. In my opinion, as soon as you see those, the potential size of your floret is basically maxed out. It's only going to get looser and lower quality from this point forward. Now I wouldn't harvest much earlier than this separating point because then you're going to just harvest a little bit too early and you're not going to get as much broccoli as you might want. So this guy, while it is ready to harvest, I already have so much broccoli. I'm going to let it ride for a couple more days. It's almost winter, it's cold, and they're not growing as fast. So I could just basically leave it out here as my broccoli pantry. So now let's move on to the world of sprouting broccoli. So what is sprouting broccoli versus the heading broccoli or crowning broccoli, that's what I call it at least, that we just harvested? Well, it is a broccoli that doesn't produce a giant main head. It does produce a bunch of main shoots at the top, but I'll show you more about what that difference really is. Now first let's talk about this variety and why I like it so much. So this variety here is called burgundy broccoli. It's from botanical interest. It has quickly become one of my favorites in all broccoli across the board, whether it's sprouting, broccolini, or just a heading crowning type. It is a beautiful plant, not just in the leaves itself. I do find the leaves to be kind of very deep colored and interesting, but the florets themselves are obviously purple, which looks absolutely stunning in the garden. I mean just look at these plants here guys, purple with green blues. It is a beautiful little feast of the eyes here in the garden. But why is it called sprouting? Well, you'll notice at the top it's already very loose, very much different than the crown or heading broccoli. In fact, let's just go grab one. So let's take a look at this side by side. So here's the difference. This is forming a main crown. They're very tied up against the stem. They're not like individual little stems coming up to the top. They're really kind of all spreading out from one central point, and that is what produces the main head. Now if you take a look at the sprouting burgundy broccoli, what you'll see is that they're all separate branches in here. They're all kind of sprouting out. Now this is basically a side shoot monster. It will produce more broccoli than you'll ever know what to do with. And now I'm questioning why I have 12 of these plants in my garden. I think everyone's going to be sick of broccoli soon. So the other thing that's interesting with these sprouting types is that they're constantly producing. They're not just waiting for that main head or like top to form. They're going to be sending out side shoots early on. So this is something that will continuously allow you to harvest broccoli from your garden for months. And not only that, but I found that this one lasted deeper into the spring when it was getting hotter than most of my other types. So burgundy would be the main recommendation I have for you. I think the checo or bell star might also be of this variety. But the burgundy one is pretty, it's prolific, and it is delicious. So what else do you need to know? So first off, right there's a little bit of damage from a bird. That's why it looks different. But I want you to take a look at these florets. See how they're a little bit more dense, and they're not as spread apart. These are still kind of developing. I could obviously harvest it at this point. It would be absolutely delicious. But if I had to choose, I would preferentially harvest this one first because they're more spread out. The actual individual tops of each sprout is also more diffuse. See how they're all separating already? So this would be the first one I'd harvest because this is going to be most likely to bolt over that other one, or even this one here. It's still quite tight up top. So what we're going to do is we're going to trace these stems down to a point where there are no more branches. So if I take a look at this top here, this is the main sort of bundle. If I come down, here's one of the first side shoots. So I could even harvest all the way down at this point here, cut this whole top off, and all this will be harvested. And all these lower side shoots like this one right here will continue to be able to grow. So I'll cut this first, and you'll see what I mean. So let's take a look at this plant one more time before I give it the old snip snip chop chop. What we're going to do here is notice that there are so many new side shoots coming out from the bottom of this plant. So I have plenty of broccoli on the way. What I want to do is look for a loose floret up top. What I mean by loose is when they're already starting to open lower down. Trace one of those down, and where that meets the main part of the plant, that is going to be where I cut it. So let me harvest this, and I'll show you in retrospect where that is. So that is a lot of beautiful broccoli, and what you'll notice is that all of this here is still open to production. Now this shoot here kind of had a mind of its own, so I'm also going to go ahead and snap that guy off and harvest it. But all of these lower shoots now will take over and continue to produce more of this beautiful burgundy sprouting broccoli. So pretty simple stuff. You basically will wait till that first bundle forms, harvest that, and then they'll be drowning in side shoots. Now let's go over to broccolini, which is very slightly different because of what you have to do at the beginning of its life cycle. So here are those three giant heads of crowning broccoli, and here is the burgundy broccoli next to it. And it's honestly getting pretty close to the same amount, especially considering that this is going to be producing faster side shoots, and in fact already has at least six side shoots that I could have harvested if I really wanted to. One more note about the difference between these is that with the sprouting type of broccoli, you tend to be able to eat more of the stem and the leaf than you would on a traditional sort of crown type, which has that really thick sometimes woody stem that obviously you can eat. You could cook down in certain ways, basically treat it like free kohlrabi, but I prefer to just have these nice tasty tender stems that come from the sprouting broccoli overall. But broccolini is my favorite, so let's go over there. So as I mentioned, broccolini is my favorite, and that is actually why you don't see a lot of it on here to harvest. It's basically just leaves and stems. Now the cool thing about broccolini is that it does grow differently than the other two, and you'll see very quickly what I mean by that. So if we look at these plants, they don't really come up into a central sort of shoot, which it then branches from. Instead, let's take a close look at this one over here. You can see that there are a variety of main stems coming up, but this is all a single plant, not three separate plants, but one plant. So let's go down below, and what we'll notice is that there really is no central stem, and that is on purpose. That's because when this plant was young, I actually came through with some pruners, and I literally cut the top off, and this is exactly what happened as a result of that. You'll notice I have one, two, three, four, five main stems coming up, and each of these main stems will grow up like this one and continue to branch even more. Now I have another one, two, three, four, and basically your broccolini will turn into a giant bush of harvestable broccolini. Now what do we look for when it comes to harvest? I kind of like them like this. Let me snap this one off. This is a pretty ideal young broccolini. You could definitely go much, much, much longer than this and get it much bigger, but at this stage, it's really super tender. The stems are sweet. These leaves are young enough that they're very, very soft and delicate. This will roast up perfectly, or you could saute it in a pan with a little olive oil and garlic. One of the quickest vegetables to harvest and also to cook and eat, because to harvest this like I just did, I would just kind of walk around this plant, and anytime I see one of these shoots that I want to eat, I just come in, snap it off with my fingers, and there we go. Now I've got two shoots of broccolini ready to go. So let me show you what it looks like when you don't pinch your plant at the start. So I ran over to my other garden where I have this burnt cedar wood and raised bed, and I've planted a broccolini in the far back corner, and I completely forgot to actually top it, or pinch, which is the act of cutting the top off, before it actually got this big. So what do we have instead? Well, we have a central stem. So if we trace this up, it's just one big stem leading to this. And this is the sad part when you don't prune broccolini, is that you'll just get one little teeny head. It's not going to be that impressive. It's not going to be that much of a harvest. And now I've delayed this whole plant from its true production cycle by probably about a month. If I had cut it earlier, like say down here, then I would have had multiple branches by now that would have been producing their own individual heads of broccolini. Because with broccolini, it's not about just the main stem. You're not going to get anything that crazy big. You're going to get way less harvest if you do not cut the tops off your plant. You end up with this little measly guy that will definitely get bigger, but it's not going to be as impressive as a crown. And you're going to be like, why did I bother growing this? And now you're probably thinking to yourself, oh, that's great that you showed me an example of a good one and a bad one, but when is the right time to do it? And how do you do it? Well, you're in luck because I have gone insane with my broccoli planting this year. I have so many plants that I even have an example of a young broccolini here that is ready to get that top chopped. So here's this baby little broccolini from above. The variety name here is Asperbrock. It's from Botanical Interest, and I've been growing this one for quite a while now. It's been a tried and true reliable variety. So if we're looking at the top, you're thinking to yourself, you'd be insane to chop this plant, but look at what's going on down below where the main stem is hitting one of these little fan leaves that's coming out the top. You're seeing this little guy in the middle. That is the side shoot that will eventually form a broccolini head. In fact, there's one, two, three, four, everywhere where the leaf meets the stem, there's already a branch. So that is the perfect time to behead your broccolini plant. So let's get in close and I'll show you where I'm going to cut it. So I was planning on using the pruners here to do the job, but once I got in close here, I realized that it's way too dense. It'd be too easy to cut any of these little baby side shoots. So instead, we're going to literally pinch it. I'm going to sneak my fingers up to the very top here. I'm just going to pinch and pull just like this. So what we did here is this little part is the baby floret. So we've removed that baby floret and also this top branch. So now if we take a look from above, we'll see is that all of these little leaf nodes with the side shoots are now going to take over. So instead of having just one stock, it's going to have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven developing and forming heads at the same time. Since I grew such an insane amount of broccoli this year and I can't possibly eat all of this, I'm going to run an experiment for you guys. This is the one I just showed you guys on how to top. So I removed the very top of this one. This one right next to it, I'm going to leave unadulterated. And later on in the season, we'll see just how different these two plants are and how that initial harvest differs. Well, this is an absurd amount of broccoli. Luckily, I don't have to eat it all alone. I'm going to be sharing a lot of this with family and maybe even donating some along the way. Because as you guys saw, I am going to be drowning in purple broccoli and broccolini and no time soon. And how do I eat it? Well, I saute it, I roast it, I actually will steam it, season it, put it into soups, blend it, bake it with a whole bunch of other stuff, stir fries, everything in between. But I'd love to hear you guys' recipes for broccoli because I have a lot of it to eat and I'd love to find some new creative ways of eating it. So thank you guys for watching. Hopefully you learned a couple things about broccoli, sprouting broccoli and broccolini. Thank you guys for watching. Eat your broccoli and I'll see you guys next time.