broccoli will this keep producing do I cut?

[GardenGnome]

[img]https://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/jj565/ericmgilson/2012-02-02_13-42-03_357.jpg[/img]

[gumbo2176]

That's a pretty spindly broccoli plant to begin with. If that is the main head, I doubt seriously you'll get much more off that plant to make it worthwhile to keep. I planted a second crop of broccoli several weeks ago and some of the plants look similar to that so I pulled them since they weren't going to produce anywhere near what my first crop that was planted in early October did. I got tons of broccoli off them before they finally played out.

[Dillbert]

in a word, no.

broccoli usually sets one main "head" - the main head can be harvested and some varieties will produce much much smaller side shoots.

after the plant goes to seed, it's not going to produce any more "heads"

[GardenGnome]

So a plant will give you one head and then smaller ones.
Do you mostly harvest one head then pull the plant?

[gumbo2176]

So a plant will give you one head and then smaller ones.
Do you mostly harvest one head then pull the plant?

No, I don't pull the plant after harvesting the main head. That is the largest head and they vary in size. Most of mine were the size of a small dinner plate in diameter then the plants produces much smaller side shoots that were about the size of silver dollars. As the plants got older, they started producing smaller and smaller side shoots. It was then that I decided to pull them since space didn't warrant keeping them any longer.

[GardenGnome]

this ones a year old and has seeded I even got seeds off it. I'm going to try and plant them. Thanks ill pull it.

[GardenGnome]

Does that go for all store bought plants? I saved other seeds basil,cilantro,artichoke,dill,pumpkins.

[rainbowgardener]

Most of the store bought plants are hybrids and won't come true from seed. But that's okay. I save my hybrid seed all the time. If your broccoli was say broccoli, packman hybrid (or coronado hybrid or whatever), you can't call the next generation packman anymore. But it is still broccoli and it is still fine. Usually for vegetables the differences aren't even real obvious.

I save seeds from hybrid petunias and that is interesting. The succeeding generations will have different colors. Some will have stripes and markings that weren't in the original. I can end up with a big variety of petunia flowers that all have the same grandparents. With petunias, if you keep the generations going they tend to fade out to white... I think the original petunia ancestor many of these come from must have been white. So then I start over with new storebought seeds.

[GardenGnome]

That's sounds cool to do rainbowgardener.
I have acouple diffrent types and colors of them in my yard.