Fenton Friday: Broccoli Harvest

Guest Post by Zachary Intrater

This semester as an intern for Washington Gardener, I attempted to grow broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower at the Fenton Street Community Garden. Before this, I had never actually grown anything myself, so I wasn’t super-confident that I would get the best results. I planted the seedlings (sourced from a local indepedent garden center) in early September, and each Monday afternoon when I would meet with Kathy, I would check on and work on my plants.

The work that I would do each Monday mostly just consisted of watering and weeding. Due to my lack of experience, I often needed help from Kathy as far as which weeds I was supposed to be pulling out, and how much I was supposed to be watering. While this was a bit of an intimidating experience for me since I was afraid I was gonna mess things up, Kathy’s help made it so much easier.

There were some holes in the leaves early on from pests eating them so we covered the plants for a few week with a covercloth to keep them out. You can see the white covercloth pulled back in the photo at the top of this post.

After several weeks, all the plants grew quite large. The broccoli heads started to form, but no heads have formed yet on the Brussels sprouts or cauliflower. By the time we harvested on December 2, there was just one good-sized broccoli head and a handful of really tiny ones that are still forming on the broccoli plants. 

The broccoli crown that we harvested weighed in at 1.1 ounces (see pic at right) and honestly looked better than I would’ve guessed it would if you had asked me at the beginning of the semester. I’m not a big broccoli eater myself, so I let Kathy hold on to it, and she’s going to use it in a pasta dish.

Overall, growing my plants in the community garden was a lot of fun. Much like this internship as a whole, it was a new and slightly scary experience, but one where I learned a lot and added new skills to my repertoire. I think that I may take what I learned from this experience and grow more plants in the future, probably potatoes. Happy gardening!

About the Author:
Zachary Intrater is a senior in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. This fall semester, he is an intern at Washington Gardener Magazine.

About Fenton Friday: Every Friday during the growing season, I'll be giving you an update on my community garden plot at the Fenton Street Community Garden just across the street from my house in zone 7 Mid-Atlantic MD/DC border. I'm plot #16. It is a 10 ft x 20 ft space and this is our 13th year in the garden. (It opened in May 2011.) See past posts about our edible garden by putting "Fenton" into the Search box above (at the top, left on this blog)