My sole remaining broccoli plant reminded me a bit of one of those rare sequels where the 2nd movie is actually better than the first (no good example comes to mind, but surely there has been one). I harvested all my broccoli a couple of months ago and this week harvested a 2nd head off the last one (zombies die when you cut off their heads – but apparently not broccoli). Okay, it didn’t taste better than the first harvest but it gets bonus points for being a surprise which makes it win on handicap.
After harvesting broccoli heads, I let the plants remain in situ in order to keep them fresh for my chickens. When my girls are left home alone, they’re always lured into their run with a treat; either a whole brassica plant – any brassica plant – stuck between a couple of bricks piled in the corner of their run for just such a purpose or blended veggies (often a leafless brassica after removing it from the chook-run-brick-pile) mixed with yogurt. One by one the old plants migrate out of the veggie bed and into the chook run.
This treat makes chook wrangling a whole lot easier, appeases my guilt and hopefully breaks the dread my girls might feel (or might not) about a couple of hours in confinement. My goal is to keep enough of these plants in the garden so a) Frank and I can eat them, b) they can end up in the chook run as a treat and c) the leftovers can be blended as a chicken treat. Three meals out of one plant works for me.
So now that I’ve taken too long to pull up my old broccoli plant for my girls and I’ve got a 2nd human meal off the plant, do I reconsider my approach and go for 4 meals from one plant.
It gets worse, according to behind cohutt’s fence, this chop-regrow process can go on and on and on. This is a slippery slope. If I’m not careful I’ll have to start paying for treats before imprisoning my girls.
What’s really strange about this is that in the same month, in both Georgia (where Cohutt lives) and Sydney (where I live), broccoli are re-growing. Opposite hemispheres but same growing dates? What’s up with that?
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 
🙂
I never have planted broccoli in the spring here, only at the end of summer/early fall.
I’m still cutting from some plants- I just can’t seem to pull them if they are still trying.
You old softie. You clearly have too much land. Can I lease some???
My purple sprouting broccoli is coming to fruition now. We plant in the Autumn, it overwinters and produces shoots in the Spring,from right round the other side of the world to you!!
Broccoli is obviously one hearty little vegetable. Now I want to plant some purple broccoli – sounds lovely.