There’s something different about broccoli.

Kale, lettuce, tomatoes – It’s exciting to grow just about any edible plant and have them finally come to maturity and be ready to harvest and eat. But there’s something different about broccoli. Maybe it’s that I had never grown broccoli before this year, even as a kid I don’t remember growing it in our garden. Or maybe it’s that broccoli is my favorite vegetable. Maybe it’s that one day there were what looked like purple-tinted collard greens in my garden and (seemingly) the next day I looked down at them from above and saw a small head of broccoli peeping up from the inside. Whatever the reason, growing broccoli is ten times more exciting than any other vegetable in my garden.

Watching broccoli grow makes me unusually aware of the presence of a Higher Power in this universe. There is just something so miraculous about watching little nutrient-packed edible trees full of tiny buds growing from seeds or tiny seedlings. Everything from the purple sheen on the leaves to the way the buds start to flower if you leave the heads on the stalk too long just really blows my mind.

I learned some things about growing broccoli this year, though. I learned that if I plant 6 seedlings in mid-May, I will get 6 full-grown about-to-bolt-if-I-don’t-pick’em heads the same exact day in early July. That I cannot leave even one head on the stalk for any longer, so they must all be harvested the same day. While broccoli will last for a while in the fridge, this basically meant I had one good week of amazingly delicious garden-fresh broccoli eating followed by… well, nothing. Back to leafy greens and cucumbers and tomatoes. So for next year (or for this fall, even) it’s going to be all about planting a bunch of seeds each week for a number of weeks or even months, in the basement under grow lights, so I end up with variously sized broccoli plants I can set out when they’re ready so that I have a relatively constant broccoli harvest over a span of time rather than this feast-or-famine thing. And let me just say, when I picked 5 heads and brought them into the house my dad cautioned me not to eat too much broccoli each day because it’d give me the farts (thanks, Dad). Well, he was wrong. Apparently I have a special touch with growing broccoli because mine was all miraculously fart-free. So there.