• To start your own broccoli plants, you’ll need a seed starting tray, some soil and some broccoli seeds.  I prefer to start all of my seeds in soil blocks, you can learn how to make soil blocks here.  Then I just place one seed in each soil block, and moisten gently with water.  Cover your seed starting tray with another tray turned upside down to help keep the seeds moist until they germinate.  In just a few days you’ll see the seeds germinate, and then you’ll want to put them under lights on a plant growing rack like this one.

Planting Broccoli In The Garden

• Keeping broccoli weed free is really important for it to be able to have full access to the soil nutrients and sunlight without any competition.  I prefer to grow my broccoli on landscape fabric, but you can also mulch it with straw, hay or wood chips.
• Broccoli is a cool weather loving crop, and it does not like to grow in the heat.  It can tolerate frost down to 26 degrees, and can usually be planted out in the garden up to a month before your last frost date.  I always use the Seedtime Garden Planning app to tell me exactly when to start my seeds indoors so they’ll be ready to plant out in the garden at the right time.  Depending on your climate, you can actually plant a spring crop for an early summer harvest and then a fall crop of broccoli to be harvested before the snow flies.

Planting Your Broccoli

• Gently place each broccoli plant into a hole in the ground that is deep enough to cover the roots and the soil around the roots.  It’s best to transplant in the evening, or when it’s cloudy to keep the plants from getting sunburned.  After planting, water the seedlings well to encourage new root growth.

Watering Broccoli

• I like to water my garden with drip line because it’s an efficient way to water and I can easily control how much water the plants get.  If you don’t have a drip line set up, you can also water with a sprinkler, but dripline is my preference.

Weeding Broccoli

• Even when growing in the fabric there will usually be a few weeds that will germinate in the holes of the landscape fabric.  I just take a few minutes and pull them out when they’re small, being careful not to pull up any broccoli.  I usually only have to do this a couple of times before the broccoli grows large enough to shade out the growth of any new weeds.

Pest Pressure

• Once the temperatures are consistently above 90 degrees during the daytime, the cabbage moths will hatch out from their winter hibernation and become active.  They lay their eggs on the plants, the eggs hatch into worms, and the worms feed on your broccoli plants and can entirely desimate your plants if you aren’t careful.  The way I get around this problem is that I plant the broccoli early enough that it’s pretty much fully matured before the cabbage moths start becoming active.  Once the plant is well established, the moths won’t be able to hurt it much.  I also make sure my soil is well amended in the springtime before planting.  Healthy soil means healthy plants, and pests are not as drawn to healthy plants as they are to sickly plants.
• You can also cover your plants with floating row cover and sandbags to keep the moths from reaching your plants, but I find it impossible to keep the row cover in place in our windy environment.  So I just plant them early, and they always turn out beautifully.

Harvesting Broccoli

• Usually about 60 days after the broccoli has been transplanted into the garden, the plants will have produced nice large heads.  You want to harvest the broccoli before the flower buds on the broccoli head start to open up.  When you’re eating broccoli, you’re actually eating the flowering part of the plant, and if you wait to long to harvest them, they will develop into little yellow flowers and not be very good to eat.  When they are still nice and tight, that is when you want to harvest them.  To harvest, just cut the head off the plant with a sharp knife. (See video).
• If the cabbage moths are out by the time you harvest, you can just soak your broccoli in salt water after harvest, and the cabbage worms will come right out of the broccoli.  I don’t mind doing this at all if it means that I’m getting high quality nutritious organic broccoli.
• The smaller side shoots will begin to grow after the main broccoli head is cut and can be harvested all summer long.  Sometimes I find that the flavor of the broccoli side shoots gets really strong when it gets hot outside, so I sometimes pull up the plants at that time and plant a fall crop to be harvested in October.  Keep in mind I’m growing in a zone 4B.

Storing Broccoli

• Broccoli is best when eaten fresh.  But when I get the first big harvest out of the garden, I always cut it into bite sized chunks, blanche it (or cook it for 3 minutes), dunk it in ice water to stop the cooking and freeze it in freezer safe bags.  Then I have it to make broccoli cheese soup with or as a side dish for any meal all winter long.