Plant of the Week - Purple Sprouting Broccoli

A little unusual perhaps, as the broccoli season is now well and truly over for us. However we couldn't keep up with the amounts of broccoli being produced by a mere 6 plants in the raised vegetable bed, and eventually we had to admit defeat and stop having broccoli with (almost) every meal.

The end result of course was that the broccoli started to flower and actually produced an amazing show of yellow blooms that the bees were going crazy for.

Purple sprouting broccoli in flower

Growing the broccoli from seed to cropping was a lengthy affair lasting from June 2012 with the first broccoli heads being harvested in February this year. However the flavour and tenderness of the heads was unlike any shop-bought broccoli I had ever had, so I would highly recommend trying it if you have enough space.

The seeds were bought from Thompson and Morgan.