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What's up everyone.
Kevin here today we are talking about some tips for harvesting your broccoli to
get the most out of this plant that takes so long to grow and we're invested so
much in this plant. We really want to get the most out of it. So here we go.
The first thing you'll notice is that there are some secondary shoots.
This one right here and this one right here.
And so when we harvest our broccoli,
what we'll want to do is harvest above that point so that these can continue to
develop and we can harvest those later.
Our second tip is going to be to look at the actual crown.
You want it in a perfect world to be nice and compact, nice and dense,
and you really don't want any of these opening up and starting to flower.
That means that you're dramatically too late and the flavor is not going to be
as good. Our third tip is to not forget about the leaves.
The leaves are completely edible. This is a Brassica.
It would be similar in the flavor and the preparation as a kale or something
like that. So you can certainly eat these leaves. In fact,
these leaves make excellent wraps. So what you would use for a lettuce wrap,
go ahead and try a broccoli leaf wrap.
You might find that the flavor is even better for you.
Our next tip is to really examine the coloration and the size of the individual
florets. What you can see here is you see some of this yellow in here.
That's actually a sign that this is about to go into flower.
These are about to open up. So I'm actually a little bit behind here,
but what you want to see is a dark green color with not a lot of yellow.
As soon as you see the entire crown, a nice dark green, it's time to cut it off.
And speaking of cutting it off, when you come in to remove the crown,
what you want to do is come in at an angle,
cause remember we're gonna let this and this keep developing for harvest later.
So we don't want a flat section right here that could collect water and
potentially rot it out.
So I'm going to come through and just gently come in with my knife and give it a
nice angled cut. There we go.
So even a slight angle is enough to have the water fall off.
So we've made our cut, and as you can see, you have one, two, three,
four side shoots that'll start to develop. And I can let these go.
Might even get a second round of these. We'll see. And then once that's done,
I can harvest the entire thing, plus the leaves and have a nice delicious meal.
So there's some quick tips on harvesting broccoli. You know,
this is a plant that can be very finicky. It gets hit by pests,
get hit by disease. Sometimes just the conditions aren't right.
So you really want to make sure that when you do come to a harvest,
you do it right and you get the absolute most out of your plant.
This has been Kevin from Epic Gardening.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
