Romanesco Broccoli, Not Your Average Ornamental Vegetable

This is my Romanesco Broccoli plant that I started from seed indoors.  These seeds, along with the Lemon Cucumber, were sent free with my order from Baker Creek seed company.

As you can see, this thing is enormous.  It has never produced a single head of broccoli, probably because I planted it at the wrong time (as usual).  And, even though it is hogging nearly an entire 4x4 bed (I only have 2 beds, by the way) I can't bring myself to pull it out. 

I'm so in love with the big beautiful blue metallic looking leaves. 

I figure that, at some point this thing will either start producing broccoli, go to seed, or become a tree.  I'll be the only person on the planet with a broccoli tree!

Do you have something growing in your garden that makes absolutely no sense other than you like the way it looks?

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Harvesting Rapini (Broccoli Raab)

This was my first time growing Rapini. I fell in love with it when I tried it for the first time at my favorite Italian restaurant, La Piazza . It has since been moved and renamed Gaetano's after a long terrible feud between the property owner and the chef, but they make their own bread and pasta fresh at the restaurant so if you are ever in Forest Park, IL be sure to visit them. When the chef came over to our table he gave such a romantic description of it that we had to try it.

The heads on this broccoli are really small compared to the standard ones so when I woke up this morning to yellow flowers I looked it up and was really shocked to learn that this is as big as they get."To harvest, cut the budding shoots just before the flowers open. Harvest until shoots are too small and tough." Uh - I'm late. Here's what the tops look like. Now that you've seen what the opening flowers look like you can take a second look at the first photo and see that they are about to open any second. I hope they'll hold on until the morning so that I can harvest a few for dinner.

The Rapini plant has really pretty soft leaves and it's not nearly as big as the standard broccoli I grew last year.

Full frontal view.

Did I mention I have no idea how to cook this stuff? Anybody got any great Rapini recipes?

Planting Lettuce: Day Zero

I planted the lettuce seeds today! I started by drilling drain holes in the new planter boxes I made last weekend and covering the holes with screen. I added bagged top soil and bagged compost to the boxes then sprinkled seeds over the top and then sprinkled a very thin layer of potting soil over the top and watered it.

The bottom box has European Mesclun Salad on the left and Henderson's Black-Seeded Simpson on the right. The top box has Rocky Top Lettuce Salad in most of the box but I also added a little more of the Black-Seeded Simpson at the very front. I have no idea what I'm doing here! The rest of the seeds go to GB.

Ummmm - what happened to the broccoli??? I'm guessing this is why it isn't suppose to be planted in the summer? What do I do now? Throw it out? Will this keep growing since it should be cooling off soon or is it a goner? This is one of the baby rabbits that didn't get chopped up in the unfortunate lawn mower killing. If you look closely you can see another one in the hole right beside it. I saw another one over by my roses earlier. They are so tiny.

I've Got News And I've Got Bad News

Isn't this the most beautiful broccoli you've ever seen? Okay, so maybe I'm biased but this is so damn cute, right? It's my first broccoli! YAY ME! After reading many blogs I noticed that most people seem to have already harvested their broccoli so I figured I just planted it too late. I actually gasped when I spotted this today. I finally got around to planting the strawberry pot. It's not nearly as cute as the lady's on the garden walk but I like it. I want to get some kind of stand so that it's off the ground. Also, the side ones are way too long for the pot. Can I just chop them off? Will they grow back? I need them to be shorter and closer to the pot.

What the heck happened here? I'm not having too much luck with my Big Boy tomatoes. I had one red one and the rest are just growing bigger on the vine and now beginning to crack.

Isn't this gross??? What the hell am I suppose to do with this? Pick it and throw it away? What about the rest of them? Should I pick them while they are still green and un-cracked and let them ripen inside?

I hope this is not caused by some neglect on my part.