[sharonl]

Hi all,

Had a bit of a surprise down on the plot at the weekend

In march/april we bought some plugs of calabrese since these did so well last year and we had broccoli for months in the freezer and were looking forward to the same again this year but...it just didn't seem to be happening. August arrived and still no sign of curds but the plants looked really healthy and were about 3.5 feet tall last years were short only about 2 foot tall so I'd put it down to a failure and said unfortunately we'll have to buy broccoli this year maybe there was too much manure in the soil or something. So last weekend harvesting the first row of maincrop spuds and I saw lots and lots of purple sprouting heads appear on the broccoli, I didn't think calabrese 'sprouts' as such until you harvest the main head! then I copped on these plugs must have been mislabelled or mixed up and what we actually have is purple sprouting broccoli....bonus!!... so I haven't grown them before, haven't a clue how long they'll sprout for. Can anyone tell me how long I'll have of PSB sprouting, gonna harvest some this weekend and give em a try, but it would be nice to know how long we'll get out of them. I don't even know if they are supposed to be sprouting now, I thought it was supposed to be an early spring crop! any ideas?

sharon