Some brassica advice?

[ritaxis]

I live in Sunset zone 17 (USDA zone, um, 9b). Basically brussels sprouts and broccoli country. And yet I have never successfully grown a head of broccoli or cauliflower in my yard. My broccoli and cauliflower grow small, bolt early, and never head properly. Their leaves taste good, though. I do grow kale but it's smallish. My kohlrabi and turnips

Comments

Comment, Part 1

[virginiadear]

Brassicas, which are a large (even a "very large") group of garden plants, are pretty much cool weather plants, and as the USDA hardiness zones are a means of knowing how cold a temperature your plants/perennials must be able to survive ("annual average minimum temperature," is the way it's expressed), this doesn't really tell you a lot about what the rest of the year is like for your plants.

Brassicas are generally cool weather-lovers. In warm climates, broccoli and cauliflower do best when they're planted in the fall, as the spring and summer weather is too hot for them. That heat can be responsible for them bolting early, and it can affect the heading (or rather, not heading or not heading well), too.
Kale likes it cool, too, so you might do better planting it in the fall, also. Brussels sprouts here in the northern part of the U.S. get harvested (from home gardens) in the late spring or the ver-r-ry early summer, but I can't recall having seen end-of-June Brussels sprouts in home gardens that late in the season.

Make sure you're growing broccoli and cauliflower varieties which are suited to your area, in terms of climate, particularly: you can provide supplemental water, usually, if rainfall isn't sufficient (and by the way, both broccoli and cauliflower want consistent, regular rainfall or watering: consistency and regularity are VERY important to these two crops!) but you can't control the temperatures in the out-of-doors.

They need full sun, but not a lot of heat, so you might want to try providing them with "sunshades" or "parasols" to protect them from the hot rays of the afternoon sun, or planting them to the east side of taller sun-lovers.
This practice, by the way (for anyone who might be reading this who's not familiar with the concept), is called "companion planting," and that reminds me that broccoli and cauliflower are "combative" when planted next to each other, meaning they inhibit one another's growth. You need to find vegetables or flowers or herbs or fruits which will shade the broccoli and/or the cauliflower plants, and which will "enhance" both the broccoli and the cauliflower. If necessary, in addition to planting the broccoli and the cauliflower away from each other, you should be able to find something else to plant as a "nurse" or protector plant next to each one---and the "nurse" plants needn't be the same plant.

One more word on companion planting. You may hear, likely from cook-gardeners or from people who enjoy cooking (or watching cooking shows) that "What grows together goes together." True.

But be aware, the word order is important, and the "reverse" isn't true, that anything which goes together can be grown together. In other words, just because two food crops go well together in a dish, peppers (sweet or hot) and tomatoes in a sauce or salsa or soup or in a salad, for example, that does NOT mean they'll make happy and mutual growth enhancing benefits-conferring companions in the garden.

On companion-planting:
http://www.ufseeds.com/Vegetable-Companion-Planting-Chart.html
http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/companion-planting
I often refer to the following companion-planting guidelines:
http://www.frenchgardening.com/tech.html?pid=31091285647395 (This is a terrific site, by the way!)

Check out "Carrots Love Tomatoes" by Louise Riotte from your local library, and for a bit more information, also look for her book, "Roses Love Garlic."

Hope this helps.