5 Broccoli Growing Mistakes to Avoid in a Fall Planting

last year i was finally able to grow enough broccoli for our family to enjoy for fresh eating all winter long and to freeze and preserve for year-round use but i've been gardening for 10 years now and for this to be the very first year that i was able to get such a great broccoli harvest i clearly have made a lot of mistakes what i wanted to share with you in the video today is some very common mistakes that people make growing broccoli and how you can prevent them to have a great harvest yourself what we need to understand about growing broccoli is that broccoli loves cool weather now i knew that when i first started growing broccoli so i planted it early in the spring and i thought that i would have plenty of time for the broccoli to form heads but what i realized in my climate i'm in the southern u.s in zone 7b and what i've noticed is that our winters tend to switch from winter to hot weather pretty quickly and what would happen is that the broccoli before they had a chance to form really big heads they would start to go to flower when it does that you really can't do anything about it because the plant has switched into seed production mode and then the crop is gone and so after a couple of years of doing this even planting my broccoli earlier and earlier i realized that it might actually be better for me to try to plant it in the fall which is when i have been able to get my best harvest but you actually may be able to grow your broccoli in the spring so whenever your temperatures start to get around 80 or the 80s you know that your broccoli is probably going to start going to flower unless it's given a shade cloth or something like that so keep in mind that broccoli loves to grow in the cool weather and whether you're able to plant it really early in the spring or whether you save it for a fall harvest planting it when it likes to grow the most in the cool season is the first mistake that you can avoid the second mistake i made i made for years and that was planting one variety of broccoli that actually grew really well but it wasn't the type of broccoli i wanted to grow it was a type that had lots of branching sides which enabled a longer broccoli harvest in general but i really wanted that big central head so what i found with the type of broccoli that i ended up growing for many years is it would not produce a huge head for me even in the fall and so i was always disappointed with these really small heads of broccoli when i realized that that was the problem was actually when a podcast listener and long-time reader of the blog told me about a couple of broccoli varieties that worked really well in his texas climate and that is green magic and castle dome and once i started growing those two varieties i realized that i had been going about it all wrong if i wanted to have a big head of broccoli i needed to grow a type that tends to produce a large head now most broccolis are still going to give you little side shoots after you harvest that large head and that's definitely a benefit of growing broccoli but what i wanted to make sure and get was that large head for sure so when i started growing the varieties that not only would produce what i wanted them to produce but also would produce well in my climate then that was a huge key for me to get a great harvest all that to say that while i do recommend checking out green magic and castle dome because they're they were great performers for me you might actually find another variety in your climate that does better so don't be afraid to branch out and to try different varieties to see what might work better for your climate mistake number three that i made was not covering my broccoli with insect netting immediately if you're like most places you probably deal with the cabbage worm and in my area a lot of times that's either the cabbage looper or another type of cabbage worm in the spring but in the fall we tend to deal with the cross striped cabbage worm and they do so much destruction to any kind of brassicas and particularly the broccoli not only will they eat the leaves but they also get into the heads and so they can decimate a crop really quickly now an organic method to use if you find that your broccoli has been affected with these worms is bt and while i'll use bt i have to be honest i'm kind of lazy and i don't like spraying things in general even if it's organic and what i found works better is to add an insect netting at the time of planting and let me give you a tip too make sure that insect netting is very secure because those moths are pretty persistent and they will find openings if you're not careful but put the insect netting on right away no matter if you're planting in the spring or in the fall broccoli does not need to be pollinated to be able to produce a crop so you don't have to worry about excluding pollinators cover them up right away keep them covered until you're ready to harvest to prevent the cabbage moth from laying its eggs and from the worms from decimating your crop mistake number four that i have made in the past specifically refers to the fall garden and that was i would plant in the middle of the day in the heat which planting in the late summer is something we're going to have to do when we plant our broccoli transplants but we also need to keep in mind that they don't like the heat and so what i would do on an accident is just pick a pretty day and plant in the afternoon in a really hot day in the 90s and not realize that my broccoli transplants would not like that what i've done instead is to try to plant them in the evening that way they can get acclimated when the day isn't as hot and then also i like to try to plant them at a time where i see that we have some kind of a cool front where we might be dealing with 90s in august in general but maybe there's a stretch of 80s or maybe there's a stretch where there's some rain or some cloud cover that is the perfect time to be able to transplant broccoli in the fall garden so i would recommend when it gets time for you to transplant your broccoli into your garden in the fall especially keep an eye on your weather start hardening off your broccoli transplants which means take them outside for short periods of time during the day to get them acclimated to the outdoors in the sun for me i even try to keep them in the shade as much as i can and then when you see that small window of that cool temperatures coming in the forecast plant your broccoli in the evening and that will help them to be able to get established before most likely the heat is going to return mistake number five when planting my broccoli again in the fall has been not to shade them right away with shade cloth and along those lines last year one thing that i did is i put shade cloth on my broccoli and i also tried to use it as an insect netting and i covered the entire planting with shade cloth that didn't have a lot of airflow so what ended up happening is yes it shaded my broccoli but it also didn't allow any air movement and many of my broccoli plants suffered and a couple of them actually died and i think it was because there wasn't enough air flow they ended up cooking underneath the shade cloth that i chose so what i've done now that has actually started to work is i cover with insect netting which allows really great airflow and then i also add shade cloth on top of that now right when they're transplanted i'll keep them shaded for a few days no matter what until they're able to get acclimated to the soil they're in that's the big thing with planting fall broccoli you're planting it in the heat of the summer and you've got to watch out for that piercing sun that really can harm those young seedlings so shade cloth is definitely your friend keep it on i like to keep it on the southern side or even on the western side and then keep the northern side open that way it can get even more airflow and get a little bit of light in while it's acclimating but making sure to baby your transplants when you're planting in the summer for a fall harvest is a huge step to being able to have a great harvest in the fall and one other mistake that i made early on when i was gardening that i have to tell you about is i didn't realize that when i was planting my broccoli how much the rabbits would love it rabbits love the early seedlings of broccoli and cabbage and really anything that you're planting in the spring or the fall make sure if you don't have a garden fence that you know is secure and will prevent the rabbits from getting in your garden make sure that you get that crop protected somehow because it is an absolute devastating thing to go out in your garden after you have planted your broccoli or cabbage and then find them eaten down to the ground by rabbits so definitely make sure that you protect your crop at the time of transplant and for me the insect netting has doubled as that so you kind of get double duty out of your insect netting both against the worms and against any of the rabbits or other animals that might want to eat your broccoli more than you do and one final question i always get asked is can you directly sow your broccoli seeds in the ground or do you need to plant them by transplant and i would recommend especially if you're a beginning gardener to plant them by transplant broccoli is a long season crop and unless you have a long season of cool mild temperatures or unless you're willing to baby them for a long period of time and start them really early in the summer i would recommend definitely starting them indoors or buying transplants at the garden center and then plant the transplants directly in the garden i like to direct sow as many seeds as i can directly in the garden but broccoli is not one of them so if you're brand new i highly recommend planting transplants for more of the lessons that i have learned and also other tips on growing broccoli check out this podcast episode called broccoli what can go wrong for a more thorough discussion of growing this amazing fall crop i hope you found this helpful and i hope it helps you to have a great broccoli harvest make sure to like and subscribe for more garden videos like this one to help you grow more food you

Channel: Beginner's Garden - Journey with Jill

Views: 6,482

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Id: 3Owgil7F8KI

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2022