Broccoli: Planting And Growing Rules

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Broccoli or asparagus (Brassica silvestris) in your garden

Broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus - all this is the name of the same plant in different countries.

The chemical composition of broccoli is striking - up to 4 mg% meteonin, up to 160 mg% vitamin C, in terms of nutritional properties, young broccoli leaves can be equated with spinach or collard greens. In addition, broccoli is very rich in carotene.

Of course, these are not all components - multivitamins, potassium, magnesium and phosphorus salts, protein, essential amino acids, lysine, isoleucine and tryptophan, methionine and choline - this is not a complete list of the “useful and necessary” that is contained in broccoli. According to confirmed data, the consumption of broccoli prevents the accumulation of excess cholesterol in the body and promotes the elimination of salts of heavy metals and their decay products from the body.

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In recent years, per capita consumption of vegetables has increased worldwide, with these vegetables gaining momentum in terms of growing acreage and broccoli.

Features of culture

A few words should be said about the biology of culture - this is a vegetable plant belonging to the cruciferous family. Broccoli is grown both in an annual (which is more common) and in a biennial culture. Broccoli plants are quite impressive in size among vegetable crops, for example, they can reach over a meter in height. The stem of broccoli always ends in an inflorescence, the leaves are large enough, have petioles, wavy curved along the edges.

The leaf blade has a lyre-like shape characteristic only of broccoli, whitish-green veins and is covered with a waxy coating. The root system is powerful enough and penetrates to a depth of 50 cm, but most of the roots lie at a depth of 20-25 cm. Therefore, you should always carefully process the aisles, trying not to damage the root system.

Broccoli flowers are slightly larger than flowers, for example, white cabbage, and its seeds are somewhat smaller than those of cauliflower.

Broccoli, like cauliflower, eats the head, which is an inflorescence in the form of a bunch of flower buds with a part of the stem. These heads are formed from underdeveloped buds that are covered with green sepals.

Broccoli, in addition to its undoubted food purpose, also has decorative advantages, for example, the color of its inflorescences - it can be very diverse - and green, and bluish, and purple, and white. Broccoli has a pronounced repair ability. If the apical inflorescences are removed, offspring heads immediately begin to form in the leaf axils, such a simple procedure increases productivity by one and a half times! After harvesting, the plants remain green and juicy for a very long time, and they can well be used as food for pets.

As for the growing conditions, broccoli is a rather undemanding crop, requires little heat, is resistant to low temperatures and can withstand even small frosts, but this cabbage is much more sensitive to high temperatures than most vegetables. He loves moisture, like all cabbages, by the way. Lack of moisture, its decrease of less than 85% in the air and 70% in the soil leads to a sharp decrease in yield, as well as product quality. This crop is not particularly demanding for soil fertility, however, it requires rather high doses of nitrogen at the end of the growing season. The best yields of broccoli are obtained in soils with heavy and very good moisture. The culture also succeeds quite well on light, medium loamy soils, podzolized chernozems, on floodplains and in low places.

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Planting and leaving

Before planting broccoli, the site must be plowed and, if the soil is acidic, then lime it. In the fall, it is advisable to apply fertilizers per square meter: 3-4 kg of manure, 20-25 g of superphosphate, 20 g of potassium salt and 15-20 g of ammonium nitrate. Broccoli seeds are usually sown in open ground in early May or in a greenhouse - in order to obtain seedlings for further planting in open ground. Sowing in greenhouses is carried out in mid-March, seedlings appear very quickly - already on the 3-4th day, and after a couple of weeks 3-4 true leaves are formed on the plants. Broccoli plants are ready for planting when 5-6 leaves are formed on them. The best seedlings are 35 days old. It is planted according to the planting scheme 50x20 cm, or, if you want to get side shoots, then 60x40 cm.

Caring for broccoli consists in weeding, loosening the soil, hilling and, of course, in watering, and the soil must be moistened quite strongly - to a depth of 35-40 cm. To increase the yield and quality of products, nitrogen fertilizers need to be applied before the heads are tied and root feeding. For this purpose, a mullein or mineral fertilizers at the rate of 2-3 g per liter of water may well be suitable.

The growing season of broccoli is usually 100-150 days, and if the weather is hot and dry, broccoli heads grow very quickly, but they are stored worse than those grown in a wet and cool season. Good crop yields are usually obtained with spring fertilization of the soil. To do this, a bucket of humus, 50 g of garden mixture, 35-40 g of superphosphate and 10 g of ammonium nitrate are introduced per square meter of the garden.

Harvest

They start harvesting the central heads before the flowers bloom. Moreover, it is not worth delaying the harvest, because the heads can become loose and lose their presentation. The crop is usually harvested in 1-2 doses or as needed (if it is a home site). The best time for head cutting is early morning or late evening. Cut during this period, they are stored longer. The yield of broccoli is significant, often exceeding 7 kg per square meter.

Breeding work with this crop has been going on for a long time. In total, more than 230 varieties of broccoli have been created, which differ in the peculiarities of head formation, for example, early varieties of cabbage of this species form a medium-sized and loose central head and lateral ones located in the axils of the leaves, and later varieties - scion heads, which are formed only after cutting the central one. In short, in the seed store you can now find broccoli for every taste.

Broccoli is suitable for a wide variety of processing applications. Salads, soups, side dishes are prepared from it, broccoli is excellent in boiled or fried form, excellent in marinades, it is often consumed raw.