Vegetable Gardening (59 page)

Thump the watermelons:
I love watching the old-time gardeners thump watermelons with their fingers to figure out when they're ripe. Whether this test is consistently accurate is another story. Here's what to look for: Unripe watermelons have a sharp sound, and ripe ones have a muffled sound. The rest is experience!

Look for brown tendrils:
The surest way to tell whether your watermelons are ripe is to look at their tendrils.
Tendrils
are the little curlicues coming off the stems that attach to whatever weeds and plants are around. When the tendril closest to the ripening watermelon turns brown, it's harvest time!

Chapter 9: Cool Weather Staples: Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, and Cauliflower

In This Chapter

Selecting cole crop varieties

Caring for your cole crops, from planting to harvesting

Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower: All these hardy vegetable are in the same family, so they get lumped together in this chapter. Even though they may look different, they all require similar growing conditions. So if you can grow one, you probably will have success with the others. These crops love it cool, so they thrive in northern areas or whengrown in spring, fall, and even winter in southern areas. This group is often referred to as the "cole" crops, because
cole
is the German word for cabbage — and since all these vegetables are related to cabbage, they often are referred to as the cabbage family of crops.

In this chapter, I discuss the major cole crops. Other related but less popular cole crops, such as collards, kale, kohlrabi, and Chinese cabbage, are covered in Chapter 11. All fall in the
Brassica oleracea
botanical family.

Paying Attention to the Often-Overlooked Cole Crops

In the beginning there wasn't anything glamorous about cole crops. They weren't as colorful, succulent, or sensuous as tomatoes or melons. Cole crops were simply known for being rugged, tough, good-for-you plants. Just look at variety names such as ‘Snow Crown' cauliflower and ‘Stonehead' cabbage, and you get the picture.

However, that reputation has begun to change. With the advent of interesting-shaped heirloom and hybrid varieties and the coloring of cauliflower into orange, green, and purple heads, cole crops are becoming trendy. They may never be as sexy as the melons, but they're getting a facelift.

Even with a new look, cole crops are still reliable staples in any vegetable garden. Given cool conditions, fertile soil, and proper watering, these plants produce lots of nutritious and delicious vegetables (as you find out in the later section "Growing Your Own Cole Crops").

However, many people still haven't warmed up to cole crops. I don't understand this aversion. Cole crops are tasty, easy to grow, and capable of producing over long periods of time. Plus, with the exploding interest in eating nutritious foods and the discovery of the great potential health benefits of broccoli and other vegetables in its family (see Chapter 2), more and more people are dipping, steaming, and stir-frying their way to health with cole crops. In the following sections, I provide details on different varieties of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower.

Easing into cole crops with broccoli

Broccoli is one of the easiest cole crops to grow, and it's one that's close to my heart. Like my ancestors, broccoli hails from Italy. My mother and I still enjoy a good meal of garlic sautéed in olive oil and tossed with broccoli, accompanied by a loaf of fresh Italian bread. She likes the smaller-headed, old-fashioned, sprouting broccoli varieties such as ‘DeCicco', whose stems and leaves are so tender that they're eaten along with the head.

Modern broccoli varieties have been bred to form one large main head. This head is simply a tight cluster of flower buds. Once the main head is cut off, multiple side branches and mini heads form along the plant. In most areas, the side branches and mini heads continue to form until the plant is killed by frost, insects, or disease. So from one plant, you can harvest right through summer, fall, and winter (if your climate is warm enough). I explain how to harvest broccoli in more detail later in this chapter.

Choosing the right broccoli variety for your garden depends on a number of factors, including where you live and what you plan to do with the crop. Here are a few guidelines to follow when choosing a broccoli variety:

If you plan to stock up for the winter by freezing broccoli heads, choose a variety with large heads that mature mostly at the same time. Try ‘Green Magic' or ‘Premium Crop'.

Broccoli, like all cole crops, likes cool weather. Warm weather makes the heads flower too quickly, resulting in a bitter flavor. Gardeners in warm climates should choose varieties that withstand heat or mature early, before the heat of summer. ‘Packman' is a good choice.

If you want a long, steady production of small but tender side shoots, choose an old-fashioned variety with good side-shoot production, such as my mom's favorite, ‘DeCicco'.

If you live in a humid climate (such as Dallas) or a coastal area that has lots of fog and mist (such as San Francisco), broccoli heads can rot before maturing. Choose varieties with added disease resistance and tightly clustered flower heads that shed water easily, such as ‘Arcadia'.

Here's a list of some of the best broccoli varieties to grow. The days to maturity listed for each variety refers to the number of days from transplanting a seedling into the garden until the harvest of the main head. If you sow the seeds directly into the garden, add another 20 days to estimate the maturity date. Of course, the actual number of days varies depending on weather and soil conditions. All plants listed grow to about 1 to 2 feet:

‘Arcadia':
A large, 8-inch-diameter, blue-green-colored head is formed high on stems above the foliage, making this variety easier to harvest than other broccoli varieties. ‘Arcadia' is a hybrid variety (see Chapter 3 for more on hybrids), so it's a vigorous grower, producing uniform-sized heads in 63 days, and has excellent disease resistance. It's also tender and tasty.

‘Belstar':
This hybrid is a favorite of commercial organic growers. It's widely adapted, produces 6-inch-diameter heads equally well in spring or fall, and it also has good side-shoot production. This variety matures in 66 days.