HOW TO GROW BIG BROCCOLI HEADS

the quest for growing the perfect broccoli variety continues in today's episode we look at growing the gypsy hybrid broccoli variety so we are sowing our broccoli seeds in Irvine California zone 10 and we are sowing our seeds in November which is the fall season almost leaning towards winter if you have very cold winters what I would suggest is sowing your seeds somewhere around January or February so that you get about six weeks till your last frost date and then what you can do is transplant your seedlings now one more question that a lot of viewers have asked me is whether growing hybrid vegetable varieties are good or bad or are the GMOs so let me just put this question to rest so hybrids and GMOs are two totally different things you have heirloom seeds which are seeds that can be grown over generations you can just save your seeds and grow them for the next season and then you have hybrids like these which are selected to grow the best plant they are not GMOs they're just selection and natural selection of plants to get the best possible plants that you can grow in your home garden so by all means go ahead and buy these kind of seeds you won't be disappointed now 21 days since we sowed the seeds you can see that these seedlings have emerged and at this stage they're free to be transplanted into your raised beds or your containers and the reason we wait for the seedlings to grow this big is because you don't want to cut worms eating away into your young seedlings as you can see here this is a raised bed where we will be translating our seedlings and I've tried many variations of how many broccoli plants grow in one raised bed properly this is a 4 foot by 4 foot raised bed and I have grown about 12 plants in the past and then one of our YouTube viewers commented that I was not only growing a lot of plants I should be growing more plants and my 4 feet by 4 feet raised bed so that's when I decided that I should try with 16 plants so 4 by 4 for plants in a row for plants in each column and that gives me a total of 16 plants in this 4x4 raised bed and this has been working very well so far for growing broccoli cabbage cauliflower I get enough room for the plants to grow and also maximize the growing space that I have now we have added a lot of organic matter into this bed broccoli requires good amounts of nitrogen to be present in the soil and we have been working in compost into this raised bed for quite a while now and remember that your organic supplements or organic additions to your garden bed do take some time to break down so prepare your bed well in advance I would say the best way to accomplish this is to keep adding organic matter every time you plant new seedlings or new plants into your raised bed that way you get the best available soil for your raised bed now I have never experienced something called Club root for my broccoli plant but if you have experienced Club root in the past what you can do is either compact your soil a little bit just by pressing on to the soil around the broccoli plant now at 66 days you can see that the plants have grown pretty large and at this stage you can add a next round of fertilizer to your plants now you can use either a liquid fertilizer or water soluble fertilizer that's meant for vegetables or you can use compost tea which is a great fertilizer when used every three weeks or so and you can see here that about 101 days after sowing the plants have grown pretty big and these are the first signs you can see the broccoli buds emerging and they will grow larger as time goes by and it's now time for us to harvest our first broccoli head as you can see here the heads are very firm very nice if you are growing broccoli in the right way this is how your head should look like they should not be long and stringy and lose when you're harvesting them it should be nice and firm as you can see here and broccoli has a lot of health benefits it's extremely nutritious and it's known to prevent some forms of cancers because it contains substances which are called isothiocyanate which word of some forms of cancers like prostate cancer now broccoli must be grown in full Sun you need about six to eight hours of Sun to grow your broccoli plants and that will give you the best tasting broccoli that you've ever grown now the kind of broccoli that you get the taste this size depends a lot on the variety of broccoli that you're growing so I would suggest that you try out growing different broccoli varieties and then see which one is the best that works out for you so in this plant profile video today we are looking at the Gipsy hybrid broccoli and in one of our previous videos we are see in how to grow the Sun King broccoli the Sun King broccoli is one broccoli variety that's resistant to heat it does not bolt in extreme weather and this variety is actually now one of my favorite varieties to grow the Gipsy hybrid it produces really good sized heads the broccoli is very delicious when we harvested and prepared this broccoli the kids loved it a lot the taste was excellent and we could make a lot of dishes with this broccoli that we harvested from our garden so growing your own food is very rewarding broccoli again is my number one favorite vegetable to grow and eat I just love eating broccoli and I'm sure that there are a lot of you who are watching this video that love to eat broccoli as well so all in all I would suggest this broccoli variety for you to grow in your home garden you can easily buy these seeds at any garden center and the hardware improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowe's in your area very easy to get these seeds you can also buy these seeds on Amazon I'll try to provide a link in the video description that you can buy these seeds as far as insects and diseases go I didn't have any insects attacking my broccoli plant I try not to use any insecticides or pesticides at all and even if I do use them I use organic methods only like water or soap or neem oil but in this case I didn't have to use any kind of insecticides the broccoli plants were very healthy throughout the growing season they produce excellent quality broccoli heads which were firm and nice and each plant produced a lot of broccoli so there was one main head that each plant produced and once we harvested the main head the plant also produced some side Birds or side shoots of broccoli that we could harvest for a very long time and this is one good benefit of growing broccoli in your garden you can get to harvest your broccoli heads for a very long time so at about 127 days since sowing the biggest heads are getting produced in this broccoli plant and we sowed and harvested this broccoli from two raised beds if you've been watching my gardening series my monthly gardening series videos you would have seen that we are growing this in two raised beds and this is the other raised bed that you're growing our broccoli plant and now we did have a lot of rain and hail as you might have seen from our previous month's video so I did have to support these broccoli plants by some small stakes and by supporting them with these small stakes they stood up very well and they were able to grow very easily throughout the growing season at about 139 days after sowing some of the other broccoli head started showing up the plants that were the last ones to catch up and you can see that the heads are very beautiful we were able to harvest this throughout January and February and also towards the beginning of March so all in all this was a very long harvest season and I again recommend this broccoli variety to every one of you you should try growing this broccoli variety I am sure that you'll be very happy with the results and another important thing to check is your soil pH broccoli loves pH which is between six point five to six point eight you can easily test pH using one of the tools that you will see in the description the video description I will provide a link to the pH measuring tool now once your broccoli grows - what you are seeing here where it started producing flowers you need to remove them now I was actually late in harvesting these broccoli heads and they started flowering and as you can see here they're still edible this broccoli is still edible but because the delay in harvesting it they are now slightly flowering as you can see here and broccoli heads broccoli florets flowers they're all very healthy and very delicious it's just that you need to remove them to avoid butterflies laying their eggs on your broccoli plants which in turn will have caterpillars eat your plants up so for the best results just try to harvest the heads when they are young and tender like this one so that you get the best broccoli out of your garden so there we have it folks that was our episode on how to grow broccoli the Gipsy hybrid broccoli variety I hope you like this broccoli variety