Looking back, I see it was mid-July that I picked my first broccoli, having planted them out in mid-April and got the seeds started at least a month before that. Today I took out the remaining plants from the bed at home, which was the last of the Broccoli ‘Atlantic’ that came from the much-missed Wilko, and there are two or three plants of Broccoli ‘Monclano F1’ at the allotment that were from Suttons Seeds. We got enough today from about 10 plants to put greens on the plate for Sunday lunch and I’m not sure there will be enough good material to make it worth bringing back anything from the allotment.

I think this is the first year I’ve tried growing broccoli, certainly for a long time. I don’t yet have the data online so I can’t calculate the total yield but I think it has probably given a reasonable return on investment. I’m sure it has done us more than ten meals although probably not more than twenty and that’s over a spread of ground about 3m². We haven’t had many of the fat, closely bunched heads we’re used to from the supermarket but, on the other hand, a lot of what we’ve harvested has been more like what is sold as “tenderstem broccoli”, which is a bit more expensive. Regular broccoli is presently just under £1 at Lidl and, searching back through the digital receipts since I started using their app (2021), it appears to have risen in price by about 33% over that period. I estimate that I’ve probably had at least £10 worth of crop and, if I take into account that it has been organic with known provenance, low food miles and often tenderstem, I could add a multiplier to the economic value (although I also have to remember that I would typically just buy the regular type from the supermarket).

I might well try it again in future but I would make some changes. Firstly, I’d probably devote less space to it. Both varieties proved very reliable (and the cheaper Wilko one was just as good as the more expensive Suttons variety) and I think I could get enough for our needs from about half the ground (using more intensely and wasting less). I would also plan to sow it later. My plants spent longer than they needed held in pots while I waited for other crops to finish. The allotment one went in first, interplanted around onions and garlic, and I think that didn’t help the yield on those two crops. The home one, held until about mid-May seemed to quickly catch up. I think I could have reduced the amount of pots I was tending and stretched the harvesting season but not starting too much too early.

Finally (and this applies across the garden), I think I need to be more diligent about watering. We’ve had a decent crop but I reckon it would have been plumper if I hadn’t let them wait for so long during some of the drier patches of the growing season. Water supply is not an issue at either growing location so that is a variable to keep in mind in future.