I won't bore you with details about *our* weird weather this year. Suffice it to say that I had to water my plants in January !!! to keep them alive, much less thriving. January is usually very rainy, but we hit the 90s then...and again in early April. 97 degrees early April (yes, before Easter). My roses never did go dormant for major pruning...Then it rained just last night, when rain has usually stopped by the end of April at the very latest.
So it's just been weird. My tomatillo is just sitting there, waiting for the heat, along with my tomatoes. The remnants of my chard, however, are quite happy...
applestar wrote:My carefully planned succession planting ...Some of the broccoli and cauliflower have fantastic looking leaves but have not headed. I'm ready to give up on them and just eat the leaves like collards....

I didn't want to allocate *any* of my precious 96 square feet to things like broccoli, which head only once, until...my girlfriend said, "You know, you can eat the leaves, too."

Duh...
So I applied the "one-third" rule and harvested broccoli romanesco ("fractal" broccoli) leaves along with kale, rapini, chard, spinach, and komatsuna last fall/winter and treated them like the others.
OMG. They were soooooo good.
So go ahead and cut those broccoli leaves off, close to the stem, using the one-third rule.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9