2015 Year in Review - Brassicas

Top Row: Di Ciccio Broccoli, Di Ciccio side shoots, Batavia Broccoli, Batavia side shoots
Row 2: Apollo Brokali, Atlantis Brokali, Spigariello Foglia Riccia, Spigariello Foglia Liscia
Row 3: Romanesco broccoli, Sicilian Cauliflower, Express Red Cabbage, Pixie Cabbage
Row 4: Purple Peacock Broccoli, Lacinato Kale, Little Jade Napa Cabbage, Tronchuda Beira

When accounted for as a group the large leafy and heading brassicas - broccoli, cauliflower, romanesco broccoli, cabbage, and kale were star producers - the group produced about 160 pounds for the year. The generally mild weather here, neither too hot nor too cold makes for good year round brassica production. I could have grown even more but I don't eat them as much in the summer and early fall because I enjoy the summer vegetables so much. There are other brassicas that I grew, such as arugula and turnips, that I'll be grouping in different reviews such as salad vegetables and roots.

We love broccoli here and last year I grew 7 different varieties if you include the broccoli/gai lan cross that is often referred to as brokali or broccolini. I use the brokali interchangeably with the sprouting broccolis that I grow. The list includes one of my long time favorites, the heirloom Di Ciccio, and a broccoli/kale cross called Purple Peacock, and 2 varieties of brokali - Apollo and Atlantis, and 2 leafy sprouting broccolis - Spigariello Foglia Liscia and Spigariello Foglia Riccia, and a standard heading type broccoli called Batavia.

Di Ciccio isn't a huge producer, the 6 plants that I've had this year produced 9.3 pounds, but I like it because it is good tasting and if I'm careful about how I harvest the shoots it can produce over a very long season. My fall planting is still producing side shoots. The brokali varieties did well, 2 Atlantis plants produced 4.5 pounds of shoots and 3 Apollo plants have produced 6.9 pounds to date. If I had to choose between the two of them I think Atlantis produces better side shoots. Perhaps I'll do a side by side test this year to see if that impression is correct. Purple Peacock is a modest producer, the three plants gave me 4.3 pounds of shoots. I grow it mostly because it is so pretty. The Spigariello varieties are grown as much for their leaves as their heads. The Liscia variety has strappy smooth edged leaves. When it produces heads they look a lot like rapini. The Riccia variety has frilly leaves. I had one plant from my spring planting that has refused to form heads, it just keeps growing long branches covered with short leafy shoots which is what you see in the collage. It will be interesting to see what it does this spring.

Batavia stands out as a big producer. I sowed 2 rounds of Batavia, one in May and the second in July for a total of 5 plants. Those 5 plants produced nearly 22 pounds of heads and side shoots and the second round of plants still has some side shoots developing. The first side shoots on Batavia are more like small heads and once those secondary heads are cut those side shoots will produce more small shoots. It's a pretty amazing broccoli and I will definitely be growing it again next year.

Romanesco, so called broccoli, which is more like cauliflower but is really a unique vegetable in its own right. I love the stuff but it is a space hog. Fortunately the best time to grow it is in through fall for early winter production. I can usually find room for a few plants in the garden. The photo in the collage is the best of the heads I harvested last January and February. I think I had 5 plants and the heads ranged in size from 5 pounds down to 1.25 pounds. One aspect of my record keeping is that I need to keep better track of how many plants I set out.  I'm still waiting for the Romanesco that I sowed seeds for on July 10 and set out in the garden on August 19 to start forming heads, they're late this year.

Buttoning Cauliflower

In 2014 I had great success with a variety of cauliflower called Amazing Taste. In 2015 all the Amazing Taste buttoned, probably because of unusually warm weather. I harvested the tiny heads but didn't bother to photograph the harvests. I also tried a Sicilian Purple cauliflower that got to be huge and produced funky heads. Weird stuff and I thought it might also be because of the warm weather. I've got more in the garden now that I was hoping would produce a fall crop, but one of the humongous plants is just now starting to produce a tiny head - very disappointing. I don't think Sicilian cauliflower will be back. It wasn't a great year for cauliflower, I guess it was beginner's luck in 2014, or maybe I'll blame the weather.

I had really good cabbage production for the spring - 55 pounds of Express Red, Pixie, Little Jade and Tronchuda Beira combined. But I had no cabbage harvests for the fall and if I don't get on it soon I won't have any for spring either.

Only one variety of kale made it into the garden last year. Lacinato was actually a holdover from 2014, producing in January through March when it bolted. Those holdovers did well though, producing over 8 pounds of greens. But I had no kale harvests for the fall, nor for this winter.

I'll give myself a B- grade for growing brassicas this year. I really fell down on the job getting a fall planting of cabbage, kale, and cauliflower into the garden. The really shameful thing is that I sowed the seeds and had seedlings ready to set out and then I just didn't get them into the garden. We  had plenty of broccoli, too much really, so that wasn't great planning on my part either. And my timing was off with the Brussels Sprouts. I had hoped to be harvesting the sprouts by the end of November (Thanksgiving), but totally missed the mark. I'll chalk that up to my inexperience with growing Brussels Sprouts, it's been at least 10 years since my last attempt which was a complete failure. At least I'm harvesting some of them now and though they are small they are nice and firm and good tasting. I'll see if I can improve my sprouts timing this year. Overall it wasn't a bad year for brassicas, but I know I could have done better.

Next up in the Review Parade is the Curcurbit family - squash and cucumbers.

Saturday Spotlight - Tronchuda Beira aka Couve Tronchuda, aka Portuguese Kale, aka...

This is one confusing leafy green vegetable, it defies categorization. Is it a kale, or is it a cabbage, or is it something in between? Seed catalogs cannot seem to agree, but it is generally listed amongst the cabbages. My nose tells me it is cabbage because when I cut into a fresh leaf it has a distinct aroma of fresh sweet cabbage and the flavor is more akin to cabbage than to kale. But for my taste it will not substitute for heading cabbage in a recipe. The texture is softer than heading cabbage. The color is a darker green than heading cabbage. And in spite of its darker hue, it is less cabbagy flavored than heading cabbage. And you certainly cannot cook it as long as heading cabbage or kale and don't even think of substituting it for kale. (Although kale is the generally recommended substitute for couve tronchuda in Caldo Verde). Really, I think it should just be in a category unto itself.

There is one thing about Couve Tronchuda that is undisputed, it is the key ingredient for Caldo Verde, a Portuguese soup - practically the national dish of Portugal. Caldo Verde is a deceptively simple soup featuring Couve Tronchuda, potatoes, onion, garlic, Portuguese linguiça or chouriço, olive oil, and water. It was a recipe for this soup in Jean Anderson's book The Food of Portugual that put me on a quest for Portuguese cabbage seeds (which she called couve gallego - this vegetable has a number of pseudonyms). I have a habit of reading about new (to me) vegetables which can't be found in markets and then searching for seeds so that I can try growing them myself if my climate allows. This vegetable was worth the search and at the time (round about 10 years ago) the seeds were barely to be found in the US. I only found one source, Comstock Ferre, but they don't carry them anymore. These days the seeds are much easier to find (use the Mother Earth News Seed Finder if you are in North America) and one of my favorite local seed companies just started to sell a named hybrid variety last year - Tronchuda Beira - which is the variety that I'm spotlighting today.

I sowed the seeds for the plants that are out in my garden now last year on August 13. The seeds were sown into a 4-inch plastic pot and then the best seedlings individually potted up into larger pots, then grown on to transplantable size. The best four plants were planted out on September 19. There's the new little plants shown below.

I harvested the first leaves on November 29 last year. Here's my first harvest of almost 14 ounces of caterpillar munched leaves. The munching cabbage worms and pecking birds were the biggest problems that I had with this crop this season. I didn't use any treatment for the cabbage worms, I just kept inspecting the leaves nearly every day and picked off the offending critters. The birds were more difficult to deter and I ended up covering the plants with a lightweight rowcover cloth.

I ended up harvesting 3 pounds of leaves last year, and 6.4 pounds so far this year, although that includes the flower shoots now that the plants are starting to bolt. The potential harvests were quite a bit more than I did harvest because I was gone for nearly a month earlier this year. All of the early harvests went into soup, both Caldo Verde and other vegetables soups.

Here's a photograph of a more recent harvest which included the flower shoots. I've been preparing the shoots by blanching them for about a minute in boiling water and then shocking them in ice water. This helps to get rid of the few aphids that are hiding amongst the buds. Then I've been lightly sauteing them in a bit of olive oil to finish them. They are delicious and mild tasting, very tender.

In the photo below and in the second photo down from the top of the post you can get an idea of how fat and juicy the leaf stalks become. The leaves and stalks become larger and larger as the plant matures. I think some of the largest ones on the plants got to be at least 18 across. One of the marvelous things about those leaf stalks is that they remain tender for a long time - they are sweet and juicy, delicious eaten raw or cooked. When I was making soup other than Caldo Verde I would slice up the stems and include them in the soup, otherwise I sliced them up and munched them on the spot.

This particular variety of Couve Tronchuda is particularly vigorous and productive. I've grown a couple of other varieties and found that I needed four plants to meet my needs but these babies are so productive that I think that only two will suffice in the future. Just how much soup can two people eat? Ah, but I'm finally finding that it is good for more than just soup - it's taken me a while to find a method of cooking the leaves that I like. In the past I've tried to prepare it like kale with less than satisfactory results. The leaves turned too soft and I didn't like the texture. Lately I've taken to slicing the leaves as they would be prepared for Caldo Verde - into fine slivers about 3 to 4 inches long. Then I saute some onion, finely slivered prosciutto, and pine nuts in some olive oil; add the shredded couve tronchuda to the pan and toss just until the leaves wilt. Season with some mild pepper flakes and wine vinegar. Yum, I really like the texture of the wilted leaves, a bit chewy but not tough. I'll be experimenting with a few more variation on this method in the next week or so, or until the leaves get too old and tough or I need to pull the plants out to make room for some spring plantings.


Oh, and if you want a recipe for Caldo Verde, just do an internet search, there's recipes galore to be found. But do try growing Caldo Verde to put into that soup. Kale in caldo verde makes a very tasty soup, but it's just not the same.

There's a very interesting post on the Renee's Garden Seeds blog about Portuguese soups and tronchuda cabbage that you might enjoy also.

I'm joing Liz's Saturday Spotlight series at her blog Suburban Tomato. It's definitely worth a hop over there to see what other worthy vegetables are in the spotlight today.