brassica raab extend the harvest

[shoshannah]

lopezislandkitchengardens.wordpress.com/tag/what-is-raab/

After the harvest, when the crop is cut off and there is new regrowth and plant tries to go to seed.

Enjoy your favorite flowering rapini be it cabbage, Brussels sprouts, turnips, rutabagas,  mustard and kale.

I wonder how long it will try to flower?  Wish I knew about this sooner.  Only tried this with cauliflower when it failed

to head and just left it waiting to see if it would head.  Next spring when the stems started to elongate  I picked on off and ate it.

Not bitter at all. 

Susan

[reed]

This year I let cabbage, Brussels sprouts and broccoli cross with each other just for that purpose. Last fall I planed the cabbage and sprouts and they lived and made lots of flower stalks this year and did it for a long time. They were the first things harvested this spring. Not sure how much mixing with the broccoli took place as it was spring planted and started flowering just as the others were finishing. The stems, small leaves and even small seed pods were all good. One of the cabbage and three or four of the same sprouts are still alive. Maybe the will make more next year too.

I'll be direct sewing some of the seeds this week. I want to see if they will grow and live trough winter and then make lots more of the little flower stalks next spring. I want a brassica crop that can be routinely grown this way for harvest in very early spring before heat and cabbage worms become a problem.

I enjoy turnip and radish seed pods much more than the roots.

[shoshannah]

I'm looking forward to try all the rapini buds and leaves next spring.  Some could be left to go to seed.

I find the broccoli stems tastier than the broccoli flowers.  

Cabbage worms have been ruining my lettuce and chicory instead of the brassica plants.

reed, keep us posted if the 2 year plants make more sprouts next year.  They are so tasty!

Maybe the plants will keep going until they reach exhaustion.  Some compost, seaweed, etc to keep them going? 

Do you use any radish seed in particular for seed pods or the rat tail kind?  Haven't tried them yet.

I always get wire worms on any root crops.  Will have to try with row cover.

This really opens up a new way of thinking on what the best parts of veggies are.

[steev]

It verges on a return to hunting/gathering; leaving plants past their conventional crop, rather than ripping them out to plant something else, if one can gather a meal's-worth (or more) of some "by-product" (ex: cauliflower leaves, Brassica "broccoli"), can expand the veggie "vocabulary" very pleasantly.

[diane]

I've had purple sprouting cauliflower survive for years - maybe 8?

Purple Cape cauliflower - 4 years, I think.

I need to keep better notes.

This year I sowed two kinds of raab - Quarantina Cima Grossa and Sessantina Grossa - in late June and didn't pay attention. They now all have seedpods. Now, if only a few other vegetables would be as quick.

[reed]

shoshannah, my radishes are just a mix up of lots of kinds. I just discovered a couple years ago how much I like the pods. I haven't tried rat tail but want to get some to mix in and I'm gonna mix in the daikon that I use for tillage and cover crop. I like milder ones so this year I selected a little for that in the ones I saved. I also discovered that I love turnip seed pods, right now I just have purple top but am gonna get some more kinds of them too. 

I'm discovering that I can get a lot more good stuff to eat by ignoring the traditional use of some things. Why the heck do I want to wait weeks or months for a stupid head of bug chomped cabbage when I can be eating yummy tasting  flower heads and stems for that whole time instead? I have a couple new broccoli types I'm adding in to the mix and will be sewing it all in a couple days. I'm looking to develop a crop that lives through winter and can be harvested late winter into spring.  

I'm trying to mix cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts all together, I'm let them sort out how they want to adapt to being planted in fall and what they want to produce when they mature. They might not produce much of anything traditional and that's fine with me, I'm after early greens and stalks. All I want after that is seeds. 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Sept 13, 2016 5:18:39 GMT -5 reed said:

I'm looking to develop a crop that lives through winter and can be harvested late winter into spring.

I've joined you in the quest. This spring, I took whatever cabbage/kale-like plants that survived the winter, and transplanted them into a seed producing bed. I harvested about a half cup of seed. It has been replanted, and is just germinating now. It'll be interesting to see what survives the winter. I've been looking at my garden, and noticing that by the time the spring seedlings have had enough growing degree days to be big enough to eat, that it's so blazing hot and dry that the leaves taste bitter. But the overwintering plants start producing lots of tender leaves as soon as the snow melts in the spring. That's what I want to be growing.

[shoshannah]

diane,  On your long lived cauliflowers do they form new heads or side sprouts?  Can you remember any more about them?  I'm am really interested in

why brassicas continue to live and what can be harvested from them after the biennial period.

Are the raab from the broccoli or turnip family.  I don't like the turnip type of raab.  I heard that Quarantina Cima Grossa and Sessantina Grossa

taste better than the turnip type.  How did your raab taste?  I can handle mild bitterness like in radicchio.  

OK I just noticed your cauliflower varieties are sprouting types.  Are they more stem type fluorescence like cauliflower or broccoli?

Joseph Lofthouse, reed, thanks for taking part.  I'm very happy that more people are interested in this.

[diane]

The really long-lived ones were sprouting broccoli, I think. Or maybe they were ordinary broccoli and too thickly planted. The kids planted them - just dumped a whole packet of seeds, as I recall (these offspring are now almost 40, so it was a lonnnngg time ago)

The one I really like is Purple Cape which forms a good-sized dark purple cauliflower head about February and also has side shoots later. It carried on for about four years, and I have new seedlings coming along now.

[shoshannah]

recipes for brassica raab harvest

nashsorganicproduce.com/recipes/ingredient/raabs/

[reed]

This spring I ate it steamed just like you would broccoli, I chopped it up in scrambled eggs and put it vegetable soup. I ate lots of it raw, several days having breakfast and lunch in the garden instead of stopping stop work to go inside.

[shoshannah]

I like to pick and eat from the garden while I'm working.  Peas were always eaten up raw.  Now I've started eating the tips too.

My cat begs me for garlic and onion greens but I hear they are not good for cats.  I'm thinking kale rapini to go along with her cat grass.

A pot of KaiLan might be manageable in the house.

I heard rapini from kai lan and bok choy have good rapini too.  I'm planting some of that too, it works for fall planting.

blog.trashbackwards.com/2013/04/13/eat-your-brassicas-flowers-and-all/

reed,  I've read that the brussels sprout top leaves are very good.  Have you tried them?

[steev]

If you like collards, pretty much any Brassica leaves are palatable, depending on when you pick and how you cook; the ones with cabbage-moth eggs and/or larvae are the most nutritious.

[shoshannah]

steev, I'll dehydrate them and send them to you for a snack.

[reed]

Little Brussels sprout and cabbage leaves are both good. Later in spring the Brussels sprouts got chewy and stringy sooner than the cabbage did. They both got that way and strong tasting as it got hotter. A couple of the sprouts grew a lot of little open sprouts along the stems through winter. They were like a Brussels sprout except not really formed, just little clusters of leaves. They were very good, almost sweet.

I hope to have lots more of this kind of stuff next spring.