perennial cauliflower

[shoshannah]

I would love to have this.

urbanvegpatch.blogspot.com/2012/06/perennial-cauliflowers-my-growing-year.html

I thought 9 star was broccoli.  On top the have a nice head, side shoots.  Cut them off and they regrow from the stump.

Nice pictures of the cauliflower growing and resprouting from it's stump.

[shoshannah]

not perennial but I love the well formed secondary multi heads

www.vanmeuwen.com/fruit-and-vegetables/vegetables/other-vegetable-plants/cauliflower-multi-headed/V48760VM

Susan

[shoshannah]

I've been wanting a sprouting cauliflower.  But it's not a desirable trait for big ag.

Typically cauliflower doesn't have side shoots but sometimes they appear. 

Please grow out if any show up.  Save some seed for me.

For those who have grown cauliflower have you seen side sprouts?

I sure would love to see this trait developed.

Susan

[ilex]

I've grown some old cauliflowers that readily sprout from roots.

I even started a project selecting for that trait and was getting some well developed heads from the sprouts. Didn't have time to keep it alive. No idea if or where seeds are.

[ilex]

In any case you could cross cauliflower with a few other things to get the side shots back again. Maybe with broccoli and then backcross to cauliflower until you get it.

[shoshannah]

ilex,  thanks for your advise.

I was thinking the same thing about the broccoli.  I had summer sprouting broccoli and purple peacock broccoli seed, Purple sprouting broccoli, so I planted those.  There's also various  oleracea kales, romanesco, and red brussels sprouts planted.  So hopefully I'll get to cross something together. 

Susan

[shoshannah]

ilex,

I forgot to ask, Was the cauliflower the female parent?  When you cut the head off, did you get multiple heads?

How big were the heads?  Cutting the main head off does this effect the quality of the seed? 

Would you get enough seed if you ate some of the heads?

What variety(name) of cauli and broc did you use? 

Would be nice to have a little bonus cauliflower for taking up space for so long in the garden.

Does the crossing change the taste of the cauliflower?

Is the inflorescence look like cauliflower curds or broccoli?

Susan

[ilex]

I haven't done the cross, but it's obviously possible. I had sprouts from the base of the plant. Normal cauliflowers once transplanted. I think I've seen side shots with small caulis, but can't remember clearly.

There are multiple head cauliflowers in Europe with many small heads.

Basic cauliflower and broccoli genetics are known so it should be very feasible. I know a green cauliflower with "broccoli leaves".

I guess a cross will look closer to broccoli the first year.

[farmermike]

To me this seems to be pretty much the "holy grail" of perennial cauliflower.

This was a little test row of about 6 Sicilian Purple cauliflower I planted in late summer of 2015. They produced a few nice heads in Feb 2016 -- which we ate. They didn't grow any side shoots along the main stem (as broccoli does), but later in the spring they began to send up new shoots from near ground level. So, I cut the old stem off to make way for the new.

I grew corn and watermelons all around this little patch during the summer. It sent up a few flowers, but made no viable seed (either due to hot weather or self-incompatibility). In the fall, when the cool rainy weather began, the several new shoots on each stump grew in nicely and produced large and small heads in Jan & Feb 2017. The little patch was more productive the second year!

My plan is to eat the large heads and let the smaller ones produce a little seed crop. Only 6 plants seems like kind of a genetic bottleneck, but I figure I'll add in new germplasm at some point anyway. It is possible that their flowering may coincide with some Burssels sprouts, in which case, I will let them cross with those in attempt to make a cauliflower x Brussels hybrid to select from next year.

It will be interesting to see if these plants will survive for a third season. I suppose this variety may only be perennial in mild winter climates like mine, but my limited experience has suggested that long-season varieties have much more potential to be perennial. My short-season cauliflowers (also planted out in late summer), produced heads in December and had much more fragile main stems, which did not survive the summer heat.

[farmermike]

Oh yeah, the Sicilian Purple also seems to propagate vegetatively quite easily! I accidentally broke off one of the main stems during December, and stuck it in the ground a few feet away from the main patch. It rooted in and produced a head. Of course, we've had a very wet winter. In a drought year, it may not have survived.

[philagardener]

Really great progress on this, farmermike! Here in the East, I haven't been able to overwinter kale, collards or broccoli. Even this winter, which has on the whole been mild, gave us an early, very cold week that took out a lot of my attempt to overwinter cole crops.

[mskrieger]

hey philagardener! It often seems we have similar winter weather. I've managed to overwinter collards a bunch of times by mulching them around Thanksgiving. If you built a frame or stacked hay bales or something around the plants, and then filled it with autumn leaves, might this work for brassicas in your location? I'm coveting farmermike's perennial cauliflower myself.

[philagardener]

mskrieger , I think the best answer would be a high tunnel but I'm not in a position to do that right now.