Brassica oleracea var. italica
Calabrese green broccoli, heading broccoli, large-headed broccoli: this is the original variety, the one that gave the vegetable its name — broccolo, “little sprout” in Italian. Brought from Calabria by Italian immigrants, it produces a large, compact central head, then continues producing side shoots for weeks.
Characteristics:
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Large central head: dark green, compact and flavorful, followed by side shoots.
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Extended harvest: from June to October, with regrowth after the main harvest.
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Easy to grow: less demanding than most other cabbages.
- Open-pollinated heirloom variety.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: sunny.
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Soil: deep, rich, moist and well supplied with organic matter. Like all cabbages, it is a heavy feeder: adding well-rotted compost is genuinely beneficial. Avoid growing it where another brassica has been grown during the previous three years, because of clubroot.
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Method: sow from April in a nursery bed or pots, 1 cm deep. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant at the 5- or 6-leaf stage, spacing plants 50 to 60 cm apart. Bury up to the first leaves and earth up the base for better anchoring.
Care advice:
- Keep the soil regularly moist: water stress causes broccoli to bolt into flower before it has even formed a head. Mulch generously.
- Placing an insect-proof net over the plants as soon as they are planted prevents cabbage whites and cabbage flies without any treatment.
Harvesting advice:
- Cut the central head when the buds are still tightly closed and dark green, before any yellowing occurs. Leave 15 cm of stem: the side shoots will grow from it.
- Then harvest these shoots regularly for several weeks. The leaves can also be cooked.
Beneficial companions:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Leave a few late-season shoots to flower: their yellow clusters are highly attractive to pollinators and appear at a time when the vegetable garden offers little.
- Its large foliage covers the soil and shelters ground beetles and beneficial insects.
Uses:
- Steamed, sautéed with garlic, in a gratin, as a creamy soup or raw in salads when very young. Peeled stems are excellent, so do not throw them away.
Saving your own seeds:
Let one plant flower and then produce seed pods, harvesting them when brown and dry. Be careful: Brassica oleracea varieties cross very easily with one another (cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli), so isolate your seed plant. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, test them for germination rates, and carefully sort and package them without any chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The broccoli of old: one large head, followed by weeks of regrowth.
