[Music]
hi I'm Lindsay Evans I'm a garden
designer when I'm not designing Gardens
you'll find me out on my allotment
tending to my flowers and
vegetables I love growing purple
sprouting broccoli it's very easy to
grow and it has a much more delicate
taste than ordinary broccoli also if
you're buying it in the supermarket is
very expensive so I always like to grow
things which are quite expensive to by
it has a much longer cropping period
than ordinary broccoli it will produce
small florets over several
weeks you can grow purple sprouting
broccoli from seed but it takes a long
time and you have to be very patient so
I buy mine in Plants ready grown at the
Garden
Center broccoli is a member of the
brassa family and like all brasas it
prefers a a firm planting bed
prepare the ground early for your purple
sprouting broccoli plants add loads of
manure and also add some lime this helps
with with preventing Club root which is
one of the main diseases that affects
Brassica plants raking a little bit of
fish blood and bow Mill or any general
purpose fertilizer then flatten the
ground with a back of a spade to create
that firm bed that all these brassas
really love plant the young plants about
a foot or more apart they need quite a
lot of space firm the plants in well
with the heel of your boot and then give
them plenty of water Cabbage White
Butterflies absolutely love brasas and
they will come and lay their eggs on the
leaves and then the caterpillars will
destroy the crop protect the plants from
the Cabbage White Butterflies using a
fine netting another Predator of
brassers is pigeons they absolutely love
them and I found things like bird
scarers and bits of video tape really
don't work very well I surround the
entire crop with netting attached to
Canes to keep the pigeons completely out
of the area your purple sprouting
broccoli is ready for picking when the
florets are about the size of your
little finger the most important thing
is to keep harvesting it the more you
pick it the more it will flow and
therefore the larger your crop mulch
around the plants with some well- rotted
compost to conserve moisture and give
the plant a little bit of feed keep them
weeded even during the winter and if you
give them a handful of sulfate of
ammonia in around about the spring
they'll really really take off so have
fun growing and eating your purple
sprouting broccoli