How to grow broccoli

Broccoli is grown for its immature flower buds, the tight blue-green head that tops the plant, along with large upright leaves that cook much like collards or kale. It is a two-season crop in most home gardens: an early spring planting that races to head before summer heat sets in, and a fall crop timed to mature as nights cool. After the central head is cut with several inches of stem, the plant keeps producing smaller side shoots for weeks, stretching one planting into a long harvest.

The hardest part of growing broccoli well is timing it around heat. University of Minnesota Extension warns that hot weather, days near 86 degrees and nights above 77, can cause broccoli to grow no crown at all, while stress from nutrient deficiency, low moisture, or a late transplant produces buttoning, tiny premature heads instead of a full one. A second-year gardener who starts seed a few weeks late in spring, or sets transplants out after temperatures have already climbed, watches the plant bolt straight to flower or stall out small, with no way to coax a full head back once that window has closed.