Broccoli is a cool weather crop. I’ve not had much success growing them, but I left one plant in the garden amid my rampant parsley, even though it was past time for broccoli growing. To my delight, it began to produce what I thought would be a big, yummy stalk. I checked it every couple of days, proud of my gardening prowess, waiting for it to look something like what I’m familiar with when I walk through the produce section of my local grocery store. As I’d not seen exactly how the plants matured, it actually turned out to be a small head that I let go too long before harvesting. Suddenly, the stalk was covered with yellow flowers on long, lanky stems.
Oh well, all was not lost! I decided to let the bugger go to seed. Not only does collecting seed save a little money, but it is also a sustainable and advisable practice. From what I’ve read, harvesting your own seed has the potential to provide a better product for your garden than any seed you could buy. Why? Because using your own seeds offers a slightly different strain each year. The seed will become more adapted to the environment where they are planted. With commercial seed, each seed is identical, year after year. What this means is that the gardener must try to adapt to what the seeds require. By collecting your own, you’re gathering seed that is adapting to what your land and environment have to offer. Seems like a no-brainer to me!
I figure each type of seed is a little different, so I will cross those bridges as I get to them. But the broccoli seed is ready now! Here’s the drill.
You must let the seed pod dry on the vine. Once the pods are good and dry, they are pretty easy to open. If you only wanted to save a few for the upcoming season, you could just pick a couple of the bunches of seed pods. I’m greedy, though. I want them all. The easiest way to handle it is to wait until most of the pods are dry. Some become dry more quickly than others. I chose yesterday because they were mostly all dry and a big storm was scheduled to arrive in the early evening. I yanked the whole plant out of the garden and cut off the root for the compost.
Next, I cut off all the stems and made a kind of seed bouquet that I turned upside down and lowered into a paper grocery sack. Google said to whack it with a stick, but I thought it would be easier to whack the bag against a brick wall. I did this several times and voilà! My grocery sack is now full of little hard, round seeds.
I’ll gather these together, label and date them, and file them in my refrigerator. They’ll be good and ready for the ground come the end of summer. I’ve seen late July through August suggested for planting. Perhaps it depends on how our summer has progressed, but I hope my lovely, backyard-harvested seed will prove to be heartier than what I’ve used in the past. I will update this winter when it’s harvest time and fill you in on the rest of the story!