The Vegetable That Gets Ghosted

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. I'm Nicole Johnsey Burke, your host and the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious yet? I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. The kitchen garden may just be the answer that you've been looking for on your own journey to health and wholeness. In this podcast, it's going to inspire and enable you to make garden magic right in your very own space. If you're someone who wants to eat more good food that's actually good for you, fill your day with great stories you want to text to a friend. If you want to hear more about inspiring people and do a little bit each day better than the way you did it the day before, Grow yourself is what your ears have been waiting for. You won't just learn about gardening here, you'll learn how to make growing as a person a big part of your everyday life. And your life, your community. And your garden, of course, will be all the better for it. So put in your headphones, turn up the volume, and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Welcome to Grow youwself. What's a kitchen garden vegetable famously hated by one of the US Presidents and most children around the world? What's the vegetable that's pretty difficult to grow in any place besides California? What's a vegetable that can make you sick to your stomach, but it is so good for your body? That's what we're diving into in today's episode of the Grow youw Self podcast. We're back to focusing on just one vegetable in the kitchen garden and today's subject, broccoli. You're going to love this episode. It's all about the great and good for your body vegetable broccoli, how to grow it, where it's grown and troubleshooting it in your kitchen garden, you're going to love this episode. I can't wait to dive in to the fantastic topic of broccoli. Let's do it. Today's episode is brought to you by Gardenary Garden Consultants. For years now, I have been taking all the lessons I've learned from my own business, Rooted Garden in Houston, Texas, and training other gardeners around the country and even around the world to help you in your own garden. Wherever you may live, you can find a garden consultant trained by Gardenary on the gardenary website@gardenary.com business businesses, check out the directory and find the garden consultant closest to you to help you plan your kitchen garden for 2021 and get ready to grow some broccoli. Now let's dive in to today's episode. All right, friends, I'm going to kick off today's episode by asking you a very important question. What is the difference between broccoli and boogers? Do you know? I'll tell you. Kids don't eat broccoli. Oh, that was a gross one. Sorry about that. You know, I love to start these vegetable episodes all with a pun because I'm just punny like that. Mom jokes for the win. Alright, so if, if you've been following along on the podcast, we took a little break from diving in deep to the foods that we eat because we took a little, a little trip into Kitchen Garden Revival, my book that came out earlier this year. But we are back. We're gonna have lots of episodes coming up that focus and dive deep into specific foods that we eat and buy from the store and hope to grow in our own garden. And we're gonna tell you surprising stories. So today is full of surprising stories, all about the fantastic vegetable broccoli. And I do think we can still call broccoli a vegetable. You know, there's all this confusion around the terminology because we typically when we're shopping in a groc, we call sweet things fruits and more savory things vegetables. But we've soon learned, you know, that things like tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and zucchini, even though they're a little bit more savory, are actually fruit. So confusing, right? But broccoli is actually not the fruit of a plant. It's actually the bud. And you're going to learn more about what that means as we go through the episode today. So I think for that fact we can actually still call it a vegetable. Although in some ways it's almost like a little. It's a flower bud, actually. Pretty fun. So let's go way back and talk about the origin of broccoli. The studies that we could find show that broccoli actually originated in Italy. So much good food out of Italy. My goodness, those people know how to eat. I've never been there, but it's on my list. So broccoli originated in Italy off of the Mediterranean, and it's been eaten there since the time of the ancient romans in the 6th century BC BC so 600 BC. So we're talking long Time ago, broccoli was there. So broccoli has been considered a very valuable food by the Italians since the Roman Empire. But when first introduced in England in the mid 18th century, broccoli was actually referred to as Italian asparagus. Pretty fun, right? So now when you're having Italian night at your home, you're having your spaghetti, your lasagna, your macaroni and cheese. That's not very Italian, but you know what I'm saying? When you're having your pasta night, you can now legitimately include broccoli in that themed dinner and say, like, this is part of Italian cuisine to have broccoli, because it literally was a valuable food for them for thousands of years. Now in the US Thomas Jefferson was actually one of the first fans of broccoli in the US and he imported seeds from Italy to plant in his kitchen garden in Monticello. If you haven't heard my story, I actually began my gardening time when I lived just down the road from Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia, when my husband was at grad school at uva. So I got to see broccoli actually growing in his kitchen gardens in Monticello. And Thomas Jefferson recorded planting the vegetable broccoli as early as May of 1767. So when you're thinking of broccoli, when you're thinking of, like, what are true American foods or what are foods that have been grown in America for years, broccoli is definitely one of those. I mean, at least in the sense of the United States of America now, Native American, they were not growing broccoli before it was imported from Europe. So it really is a pretty new crop in the sense to the North American continent. Only been here, I guess, for about 300 years, and is somewhat of a new crop to American consumers. So even though Thomas Jefferson started growing it way back when, broccoli wasn't first grown commercially in California until the early 1900s. And from what we could find, it started in around 1924. That was the first time that broccoli was packed in ice and shipped east in the United States. And surveys and studies show that basically broccoli didn't really become, like, a household name in the United States until World War II. After World War II, so started shipping it around the U.S. but it didn't really become a thing until, you know, 1940s, 1950s. So, children, if you're listening, you can thank your grandparents for making broccoli, a vegetable that's now available across America, and for your mom to buy and make you, you know, make you eat it or at least try to make you eat it. Okay, so that's where broccoli originated. Now let's talk about the nutrients in broccoli. I started the episode talking about, you know, it's so good for you, and it really is. I have, I've had some friends who have been battling cancer or dealing with serious, serious illness in their body and have time and time again found that as they approach nutritionists or worked with doctors, that broccoli is almost always on the, the list of the vegetables that they need to eat as a way to heal their body from the inside out. In fact, one of my dear friends who battled breast cancer for years, broccoli was like top on her list of key foods that she was eating daily to fight, to help her body to fight breast cancer. So if you want something high in vitamin C, C, but you're not, you're not feeling the orange or the grapefruit or, you know, the citrus, then actually, believe it or not, broccoli is really high in vitamin c. Just making 1 cup of chopped broccoli will give you the vitamin C equivalent of a whole orange. One cup of raw, chopped broccoli actually gives you your entire daily needs for vitamin C. And let's say you know, you need some calcium, but you're not big on dairy. Well, actually one ounce of broccoli has an equal amount of calcium in it as one ounce of milk. Now I did a post, I think last year talking about how you can get calcium from vegetables. And so many people come and came at me and they're like, well, you need this and this for your body to take up the calcium. So look further into it. I'm no nutritionist. I think there are, you kind of have to mix some, some other foods and things in your diet to get the calcium out of those vegetables. But broccoli does literally inside of it have the same amount of calcium as an ounce of milk. Broccoli is also really high in vitamin A. And guess what? Vitamin A helps you fight cancer. It's also known to help keep your eyes healthy, to stave off glaucoma and other eye degenerative diseases. And you know, 40 year old women take note. It also helps promote healthy skin. So I think I'm going to eat some more broccoli today. It's also been known to break down urinary stones like kidney stones. It helps with summer heat and dehydration and also maintains healthy bones and teeth. That's all that vitamin A Can help you do. And broccoli is super high in it. I don't know if you know the five letter word fiber, but it's one of those things that we're often missing in our diet. I know my kids are, because they love to eat bread and dairy. Like every other meal is like pasta, pizza, spaghetti. I guess spaghetti is pasta, right? Pasta, pizza, sandwiches, quesadillas, tacos. It's like carbs and dairy altogether. And so oftentimes most of us are missing a lot of fiber in our diet. And you can just look at broccoli and know it's full of fiber, right? I mean, that stuff, it's like little trees, actually. So fiber is not just rich in soluble fiber, but also in insoluble fiber. Fiber. And your body actually needs both types. So it's fun to know that just eating broccoli, having the stem and the little floret together actually fulfilled both needs, the insoluble and the soluble fiber in one. Then finally, broccoli also contains the flavonoid Kaempferol. I think I'm saying this right. And camphorol is an anti inflammatory. So if you're familiar with, you know, things about nutrition, we're all trying to basically fight inflammation in our bodies. Inflammation has been known to cause, you know, bone disease and nerve disease and cancers and heart disease. So what we really want is anti inflammatory foods in our diet. And broccoli is that flavonoid is known to help with that. So have I convinced you that you should start eating some broccoli today? I think we're all going to have broccoli for lunch today, am I right? So let's. We've talked about where it started and how good it is. So let's kind of talk about what's going on with broccoli these days in the us. So I mentioned this in the intro, but believe it or not, 90% of the US's broccoli is all produced in California. So we call California the Golden State, but we might want to start calling it the broccoli state because 90% of the broccoli that we're eating comes from California. So if you live in California, good news, you're basically eating local every time you eat your broccoli. But if you live in New York or la, I mean not la, or on the east coast or in Florida or in the Midwest, then it's very likely that the broccoli you're consuming had a long road trip before it made it to your plate. So that's kind of a bummer. We're going to talk more about that in this episode, about why it's grown there and what we can do about it. So while the US Enjoys their broccoli. Actually, you're not going to believe this. This is probably not true for children, but studies show that the US enjoys an average American eats about 4 pounds of broccoli a year, which actually isn't that much if you weigh ahead of broccoli. But we are only the third largest producer worldwide. Can you guess the other two large producers of broccoli? Well, you just have to look at populations and you'll know. So China actually produces over 8 million tons a year of broccoli, and India comes in at the number two spot in terms of production. Having lived in China for two years, I can definitely say that their broccoli is fantastic. And they have all these variations of broccoli that were so delicious. I feel like we had broccoli at least, you know, once every two or three days. And it was a super popular dish. Like, it was just a very easy dish that we could order again and again and again. But even though we're not the largest producer of broccoli, consumption of broccoli has jumped about 950% in the US during the last 25 years. Probably because most of us are waking up to our need for more nutrients in our diet. And maybe chefs, and maybe the push toward veganism or vegetarianism or even kind of the wake up call to fight cancer has become the push for this. But that's crazy, right? 950% increase. So we're saying maybe it's because broccoli contains all the nutrients. Vitamin A, vitamin C, potassium, folate, iron and fiber. So here we go. Did you know this is kind of interesting. So even though most of us think of broccoli as, say, a naturally occurring food, obviously we usually don't associate it with the words GMO or modification. But really, and this is true not just for broccoli, but for a lot of the vegetables we actually currently eat is that broccoli is a modification. It's essentially a man made vegetable. Now, it was obviously made a long time ago. We talked about it being, you know, growing 6th century BC in Italy. But what happened is plant scientists and breeders, they developed broccoli by cross breeding cabbage with other cruciferous crops. So as you know, cabbage is. It forms a head, but the head is comprised of leaves. And with broccoli, the head for this vegetable is actually it's A huge flower head. So if you've ever grown broccoli or seen it growing, you know that as soon after the head has formed and say if the. The temperatures rise or become not optimal for the plant to grow anymore, each of those little tiny green buds opens up to form flowers. So, so they actually, scientists worked to, to breed this plant to instead of forming a head of leaves, to literally form this huge dense head of plant buds of flower buds. So crazy buds are left intact with the roots, they will open to reveal small yellow flowers. I hope I can share this photo in the show notes for this episode. But years ago, when my family grew broccoli for the very first time, I had no idea how to grow it. And I wasn't even thinking spacing. And so we just tossed out a lot of seeds. And broccoli is actually pretty hard to grow in Houston. That was our first time to grow it there. And we'll talk about that in just a second. Why it's difficult in that climate. And, and my daughters were very active in the garden with me that season, and we had so much broccoli go to flower. A lot of it was because the temperatures weren't right, but also because the plants were too tightly spaced, they were too close together. And so when stressed, most plants go ahead and go to seed just to kind of keep. Make sure it's like in their DNA, to make sure that their plant continues to go in seasons to come. So my sweet Rebecca, she's my third child, she actually took one of the plants, grew very, very tall, and she called it her broccoli friend. And she loved it so much, so even she would go out and pet it and talk to it in the garden because it almost took on the shape of a little girl. It was so tall, and the head of it almost resembled a face and hair. I know this sounds crazy. Anyway, even when we pulled all the flowering broccoli out of the garden, Rebecca carried of those plants around with her for days until it turned, you know, really bad smelling. As you guys know, broccoli does with that sulfur smell as it starts to decompose. But anyway, I still have this picture of Rebecca in our laundry room holding her broccoli friend. So a great reminder, you know, a fun reminder of how unique this plant is and how special it is to grow your own because you really get to see all the stages of a, of a food and see it in a very new way. Another fun thing that's been going on with broccoli is broccoli coffee What? Yes, that's right. So in Australia, this was on the Today show, actually a while ago was broccoli coffee as a new food trend, and it popped up in Australia. So do you guys want a broccolate or what? This drink actually contains espresso, steamed milk, and then a healthy dose of high fiber broccoli powder. What? So to make broccoli coffee, supposedly you they take broccoli and dry it out. So completely dehydrate it, ground it into a fine powder, and then scoop it into the coffee. So it's obviously not going to taste like sugar. But when you stir this nutrient rich powder into your coffee, it basically gives you a whole serving of vegetables right alongside your morning cup of joe. And in the study, they were saying that it was a great way to use up those ugly vegetables, which I think is pretty cool. So they'll take the broccoli that isn't necessarily going to sell in the store, grind it up, and then toss it in coffee. I don't know if I want to have it in my coffee, but I do like the idea of broccoli powder, you know, getting to mix it into like a smoothie or something like that. I'm going to definitely need some sugar to go down with that broccoli powder. I don't know about you guys. Another fun food trend with broccoli is broccoli crust. So I'm sure you heard of cauliflower crust, but you can also do broccoli crust, too. So there was a Forbes article called Move over cauliflower crust. Broccoli crust is here in just a second. Before the end of this episode, we're going to do a food fight between broccoli and cauliflower. So you'll get to hear how those two would compare nutritionally because broccoli and cauliflower are in the same plant family. So what else is up with broccoli? Well, if you were around in the 1990s, which I was, those were the George W. Bush days. And he famously declared in 1990, he said, I haven't liked broccoli since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. I'm president of the United States and I'm not gonna eat any more broccoli. He swore in 1990 that broccoli would not be served ever in the White House or on Air Force One. This was in a New York Times article way back in 1990. So I'm kind of disappointed in our president because, I mean, you've already heard how good broccoli is for you. But we weren't getting any help from the president in terms of getting people to eat broccoli instead of boogers. In fact, I'm afraid his quote probably encouraged more kids to just say no to broccoli. So I think perhaps maybe he didn't like it because of the taste. But other people don't like broccoli for another reason. I'll never forget, Jason and I had just gotten married. We lived in Philly in a row home. And on our row home on our little street, there were so many young doctors. So we had lots of couple friends who had all just gotten married as well. And, you know, I was trying to learn how to be a good hostess. So I was trying to teach myself how to cook in some way and host dinner for people. So I'll never forget we invited this. I think it was the ER doctor and his wife. They were becoming good friends over for dinner. And I had made, I don't know, some little, like a meat, a veggie and a starch. You know, my mom had taught me how to just kind of have those three things, plus probably some bread or something. Anyway, broccoli was on the menu for that evening. And I cooked it in this special way. You know, I just come back from China, so I was super inspired. I loved eating broccoli. And I'll never forget, he sat down. Rich is his name. He sat down and he said, I do not eat broccoli. I will not eat it. I'm not going to eat broccoli. And I was so hurt. And my little new new cook self was, like, offended and, and everything. But anyway, he didn't go into detail. But later in the night, he explained to us that basically, if he eats broccoli, like his stomach is finished, like, he's, you know, gonna be a wreck for the next 24 hours. So I guess I, you know, I wasn't putting two and two together, but some people literally have. Have trouble digesting broccoli, and here is why. So actually has been known to produce a lot of intestinal gas. Yes, I'm going here. So intestinal gas usually is created when your body is taking in too much air into your digestive tract or when bacteria is breaking down your food in your intestine, which is the case with broccoli. So remember we talked about how much fiber is inside of broccoli? It's got soluble and insoluble fiber in it. It and oftentimes human beings lack the enzyme to break down raffinose. Which means it doesn't get broken down in the small intestine. So then that raffinose gets passed down to the large intestine, and that's where your bacteria in your body start to try to break it down as much as possible. So when it doesn't happen in your small intestine and then it tries to happen with bacteria in your large intestine, this can produce, guess what, a lot of gas, particularly if you're not used to eating foods with Raffinose in them. So there are other foods that are high in raffinose, and you can probably guess what they are if you've eaten them, because you probably have the same kind of experiences. So those include beans, hello, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus. So supplements that contain the enzyme alpha galactosidase can break down the Raffinose in broccoli and could help you prevent gas formation. This is all according to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse. So if you have ever wanted to eat more broccoli or beans or cabbage or Brussels sprouts, all those things are so good for us, but you're turned off, like my friend Rich, because of what it does to your stomach. Stomach. You can take a couple notes here. So first is that one of the best ways for your stomach to learn how to digest it is to actually eat it more often. So sometimes what can happen is it's so new. It's such a new thing that we haven't had in a while and our body kind of goes into shock. So possibly taking in smaller dosages and then also just consuming it more regularly. But all that to say, my friend Rich, and obviously other people around the world can relate to you. If you know you should eat broccoli, but you'd rather eat something else because it just doesn't necessarily agree with you. Now you know why the problem is it's so fibrous and has that Raffinose in it that your body actually can't break it down fast enough. Crazy, right? Well, we have dug into some fun facts and surprising stories all about broccoli. So now I want to actually talk about growing broccoli. You've learned that 90% of broccoli is grown in California in the U.S. so is it possible? Why is broccoli mostly grown in California? And would it ever be possible for us to actually grow our own right where we live? So I've gardened, as you know, in lots of places. If you haven't listened to the episode, I think it was like 10 years. 10 years, five cities, eight gardens. I don't know, something like that. It's a while back. It's back in like May I tell the story of learning to garden in a lot of different climates. And I personally have planted broccoli in Nashville, in Houston, Texas, and in Chicago, Illinois. And I will say in all those three places, I have found difficulty in growing broccoli. And in these next few little points, I'm going to explain why. So first of all, what temperatures do broccoli does broccoli love to grow in? Well, broccoli is in the brassicae family. So if you know the, if you've studied through my book Kitchen Garden Revival, or you've been in my kitchen garden Academy, you know that I like to teach and learn the garden through plant families. So in the brassica family, we've got kale and mustard, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, radishes, arugula, and all those plants generally tend to prefer cooler temperatures. So broccoli actually likes the soil temperature to be right around 70 degrees at the most, probably 80 degrees. Broccoli seeds will germinate in temperatures as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but the process could take two or three times as long. So broccoli generally prefers, it loves like 70 degree weather or cooler. And broccoli is also what I like to term a large and long plant. So it's going to take at least 60 days or up to 8 to 12 weeks for broccoli to go from seed all the way to the head that you're going to harvest. Broccoli also likes really rich soil. So often after you plant your broccoli, you want to plant it in a loose, sandy soil, but you also want to be fertilizing it with nutrient rich compost or even some phosphorus rich fertilizer and provide consistent soil moisture and also regular watering. Broccoli does not like to dry out and does not like, like a lot of heat. It's important to not get developing heads wet when watering, though. So you want to make sure that you're watering the broccoli roots and not the head or the leaves. Or you could end up with mold or disease. You also can, what I love to do is kind of surround the plant with compost. I call that in the supporting phase. So supporting it with compost and then also making sure that broccoli has plenty of space and room to grow. Like I said, this is a large and long plant. It wants to get a lot of sunshine and it's Going to need a minimum of one full square foot, if not more, to grow in. So there are a lot of different varieties to grow of broccoli. Some that you might want to look into are broccoli Calabresi. That's the traditional broccoli. There's also Kailan broccoli or gai lan broccoli. That's like a Chinese broccoli. And there's a tenderstem broccoli, baby broccoli, and even broccolini. Then there's like you can do purple broccoli. I think it's a broccoli of Sicily. There's all different kinds of broccolis that you can grow. Generally, you want to be looking for a seed that is bred or able to grow in your climate. So I talk about this in my book, Kitchen Garden Revival. If you can source seeds that have been grown and bred close to your home, then you're more than likely going to be getting broccoli seeds that are tolerant to your climate and can grow and do well where you are living. So like I said, broccoli can be started by seed directly in the garden as long as the temperatures are ideal. But oftentimes, broccoli is a great candidate to be started indoors under light lights and then transplant it out into the garden when the temperatures are ideal. This is often necessary in most of the places I've gardened because we're trying to start the broccoli either when it's too hot or too cold. And we're only going to have a small period of time when the temperatures are ideal for that full head to grow within a 60 day period. And this is why nine times out of 10, broccoli is produced in California rather than other parts of the US because it's very rare to have a climate where the temperatures are sticking around 70 degrees and dropping in the evening to cooler temperatures for a 60 to 90 day period. In a lot of other parts of the US you might have a month of that kind of weather or even less. And it's just not long enough for the broccoli to have a full amount of time to go from seed all the way to a full head that you can harvest. And this is why most times, most, the broccoli that we're eating in the US had to travel a really long way to get to us. Which brings me to a fun thing that's happening. There's an article in the New York Times about the work that some scientists are doing to try to breed broccoli varieties that can be grown in other parts of the US Specifically on the East Coast. The article is great. It's in the New York Times from 2013. The Texas. The title is A Scientist Helps to reinvent Broccoli. Now, if you're at all against, you know, hybridizing seed or modifying seed, then you may not love it. But if you do care about local production of food, then I think it's a really interesting read. There are some parts in there where they compare this work in this article to the work of Monsanto, which is definitely not a company that I want to get behind. But it is interesting to read about basically the challenge that we face with a lot of popular foods in the US where there's demand across the entire country to have a particular plant basically year round, but yet we just don't have the climates and the ability to actually grow that food nearby. So what we end up happening, what ends up happening in the US Is just tons of food shipping. So we're connecting all this fuel usage with the food that we want to eat, eat. So if you've never eaten, just harvested broccoli, then I have to say you want to at least try to grow some of your own or at least be looking at it, looking for it in your farmer's market to get to taste what it actually is like to have a head of broccoli that was harvested, say, within one, two days of eating. The taste is so much sweeter. It's just so much more enjoyable, I have to say, than those broccoli heads that have traveled across the country and then sat on the shelves in the grocery store for days and weeks. Now. Let's talk about troubleshooting with, with broccoli when you're trying to grow your own, Whether you're growing one of these types that maybe scientists are working on to make it possible for us to grow in warmer climates, or you are. You're growing this, the traditional broccolis. So one of the biggest challenges is aphi. And so if you're starting to see curling leaves on your broccoli plants, this may be a sign that your leaves are getting. Getting attacked by aphids or other insects. A great way to deal with that is to apply some soapy water to all sides of the leaves when you do see aphids, I love using Dr. Bronner's castile soap. It's a great way to. To deal with aphids basically, on any plant. Another challenge you may face is downy mildew. I've seen this a lot on My broccoli, that's when you have yellow patch the leaves and that's usually caused by too much moisture. So you want to keep your leaves as dry as possible. And I always say every time you see a yellow leaf, go ahead and pull it off the plant. If you start to see tiny holes in your leaves, so not from the outside edges, but inside the leaves, you're seeing holes disappear. That's a good sign that there's cabbage loopers underneath your leaves that are eating on those leaves throughout the day. So you want to turn the leaves leaves upside down and hand pick those tiny caterpillars before they get larger. And then you can also use, you can end up using the Castile soap water again. You can use a garlic barrier, or if you have a really out of control problem, you can use Monterey bt. That's a way to really, I mean, those. That's the harshest way that I would treat any kind of pest in the kitchen garden. If you continue to see challenges with caterpillars, you may want to consider putting a floating row cover cover over your broccoli plants to keep the moths from laying those caterpillars there in the first place. Another issue you may start to see is a nitrogen deficiency. So when you're growing broccoli, broccoli is all about nitrogen. All those big green leaves and the formation of that flower head is really needing a lot of nitrogen in the soil. So if you're starting to see the bottom leaves turn yellow on your plant and you're seeing more yellowing in the plant as it grows, this may be a, that you need more nitrogen in your soil. So you can use blood meal if you're okay with using some animal products, or you can use like a cottonseed meal to amend your soil to get more nitrogen into your plant. All right, then there's other one called, another issue is called clubroot. So this is when you've got a quickly wilting plant. So I don't know if you've ever had this happen where you put the plant in the soil and it starts to wilt away before it starts to form. So this can often be due to a fungus in your soil. So this may be where just the plant starts to kind of curl up on itself. If this starts to happen, I want you to get this out of the soil immediately. This is a plant disease and it's really not treatable. So you want to go ahead and get it out of the garden. Toss that plant, don't put it in the compost and then you're going to want to work on your soil. So adding some compost to your soil and raising your ph would be really important. You may even want to look into sterilizing your soil if that's a problem that persists. Now, when you harvest your broccoli, like I said with my daughter, with her broccoli plant, her broccoli friend. We could only keep broccoli friend around for a little while and then it suddenly started to smell. And you'll find this, even with broccoli that you harvest from your own kitchen garden, that it's pretty hard to store for a long time, especially at room temperature, because sulfur, I believe, starts to break down and you start to get this smell and the taste is definitely compromised. Now if you're storing broccoli in a cool temperature, it can last for say, 10 to 14 days. So putting it, you know, in icebox or in a really cool place in your home or in the refrigerator. So this is why this is how they can ship broccoli to us these days is everything is, you know, packed in really cool, cool temperatures. So you want to, if you do harvest your broccoli and you're not going to use it right away, but I would recommend, recommend do eat it right away. You're gonna thank me later. But if you are getting it from the store, then you definitely want to keep it in a cool place. Now if you're trying to grow broccoli, you do want to think about where you're going to plant your broccoli and how you're going to arrange it with your other plants. Now, depending on where you are in the US Right now listening to this, this is being recorded in October. So if you're in a mild climate where you're entering into the cool season coming up, I know my clients in Houston with rooted garden that right now broccoli is actually something that can be planted now and over the next few months. So if your temperatures are looking like they're going to be in the 70 degree range for the coming 30, 60, 90 days, this is an ideal time to be growing broccoli. If your temperatures are going to be going to freezing and below or if they are going to be getting really hot in the coming 30, 60, 90 days and obviously you're going to want to wait to plant broccoli until temperatures are coming down, down. When you do plant your broccoli, I recommend not planting it too close to other large Brassica family plants. So things like kales and cabbages and Cauliflowers, generally, I want to space those away from each other so that we're breaking up the pest buffet, as I like to say. So planting it with other plants that don't mind being in shade and that are smaller plants. So if you've read my book Kitchen Garden Revival or you're in Kitchen Garden Academy, you know how we categorize and break down plants by size and duration. So in general, it's great to plant broccoli alongside plants that are smaller, have a shorter lifespan, and don't take up as much space. Some gardeners say that planting broccoli near celery, potatoes, and onions can actually improve the flavor of broccoli. And then common good companion plants for broccoli are things like dill, rosemary, basil, mint, garlic, and thyme. Time. So in general, planting your herbs near your broccoli is a very good idea. I want to finish up this episode with a food fight. We're going to go broccoli versus cauliflower. So most people generally think of broccoli and cauliflower together. And in fact, I have a great pun for you for this one. So what is. What do you call it when broccoli becomes a ghost? You guys can guess this one, right? It's cauliflower. Duh. Almost as soon as I decided to tell you that joke, I thought it was lame. So broccoli is just. I mean, cauliflower is just broccoli that's been ghosted. So both broccoli and cauliflower are low calorie foods. They're pretty much a tie for that. And broccoli does have a little bit more protein, so 2.6 grams versus 2.1. And then carbs are also nearly a tie. Broccoli's got 6 grams of carbs and cauliflower has 5. Broccoli has more fiber than cauliflower and almost double the calcium. Broccoli also has close to double the amount of vitamin C as cauliflower. And when it comes to iron, magnesium, zinc, and phosphorus, broccoli also has a slight edge. Cauliflower has a little bit more potassium and folate than broccoli. And broccoli contains 11% vitamin A, but cauliflower has none. Finally, one cup of cauliflower is going to give you more than more vitamin K than you need in one day. Unfortunately, both vegetables pose the same common side effect. I don't know what just came over me, why I had to do that. It was like my. My kindergarten self came out. Anyway. They both make you toot Gas and bowel irritation is a common issue with both vegetables. But the health benefits of broccoli and cauliflow outweigh the poots or the farts, depending on how you want to say it. So one important note is that broccoli is a higher source of vitamin K, which could interfere with blood thinning drugs. So if you're on blood thinning drugs, maybe you want to stick with the cauliflower instead of the broccoli. And it's also important to note that broccoli and cauliflower contain the lowest amounts of pesticide levels according to the ew. So the environmental Working group, if you're not familiar, they have a dirty dozen list of plants that are, you know, that are most important to buy organic. And actually broccoli and cauliflower, they found in testing that even when they're not grown organically, they carry a pretty low amount of pesticide when you eat them. So it's really nice to know that it is safer to buy conventional broccoli and cauliflower, although it's always obviously wise to buy organic plants no matter what. But if you're trying to decide and prioritize, if you've only got so much money in your budget to shop organically, then broccoli and cauliflower are two plants where it's not as big of a deal as it is with other things like spinach and in your leafy greens. So what do you think? Broccoli versus cauliflower? I will say also from the gardening perspective, I have found that broccoli is easier to grow than cauliflower. Cauliflower is. Is. Even though both are difficult, I have found the most difficulty with cauliflower. Trying to get it to form a dense head and keeping the color the right color and not turning brown or, you know, discoloration and not having pest pressure. I found more success with broccoli than with cauliflower. So what do you think? Broccoli versus cauliflower? What team are you on? Although both vegetables are packed with nutrients and both are obviously super good for you, broccoli, I think, is the clear winner. It's got more protein, more calcium, more vitamin C, and it is easier to grow in the garden. So broccoli wins, I think. What do you think? You gotta tell me. So this has been such a fun little trip down into the broccoli library of info. I mean, I hope you feel totally enlightened about this incredible vegetable. Started all the way back in, brought to the US By Thomas Jefferson. At least that's the first account we know of and then widely dispersed around the US starting in the 1920s and then really pushed out after the 1940s. So it can give you gas. It's true. It can be hard for your body to digest it. And it's actually pretty hard to grow in the garden. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't include it on our list of things to eat. We should definitely prioritize it at the farmer's market when it's available in spring and fall, generally depending on where you live. And you should definitely try to grow your own. One of the things I love doing is when I can't grow a specific, you know, the basically grocery store generic variety of a plant that I'm used to eating or buying from the store is to look into ways that I could grow it, grow another variety that would work in my. In my own space that maybe has the same nutrients and could have the same benefits. Benefits, but not be as difficult. And there are lots of other broccolis, broccoli type plants, lots of other varieties that you can try growing. There's like broccoli rabe, and I think I'm saying it right, and broccolini, basically growing plants that have very similar nutrient breakdown but aren't required to form that big dense head that we've grown so accustomed to buying at the grocery store. I hope this episode has made you look at your food in a new way. I hope you now appreciate that head of broccoli that you see at the grocery when you see such a perfectly formed vegetable. I hope you now know how much work has gone into making that happen. That plant needed at least 60 to 90 days to grow to the full head. It required over a square foot, constant monitoring the nutrition and the water levels for that plant. And then, more than likely, if you're not in California, that plant traveled quite a long ways to. To make it to your local grocery. So if you see it on the grocery store shelves and you especially see an organic variety that's kind of pricey, now you know why. And when you see it at the farmer's market, you better give that farmer a big fist bump or a like, high five. Or if it's during COVID give him like a big, you know, a big wave. I was going to say smile, but that's not possible with our mask on. Anyway, tell him or her she is amazing for growing that broccoli all the way from seed, especially in climates where most scientists and others would say it's pretty difficult if not impossible to do. Our food is a wonder. It is amazing what can come from a tiny seed and how it can feed our bodies and protect us from disease, make us strong and healthy and able to go out and make a difference in the world. So fill up on the good stuff, friend. Fill up on the Broccoli this season. I hope that you eat to the full. Broccoli is in season. If you're listening to this in the fall, this is a fantastic time to be eating as much broccoli as possible. It's going to give you tons of nutrition. All that vitamin C, vitamin K, vitamin A. It's going to give you so much nutrition right now to prepare you for the flu and cold season that's coming our way. So fill up on the good stuff, especially broccoli. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to the Grow youw Seldom podcast. I am so thankful that you joined me and hung out here to talk all about broccoli. Don't forget that. This week's episode is brought to you by the Gardenary Garden Consultants. Listen. After starting my own company, Rooted Garden, five years ago, I have trained over 300 gardeners around the US to help you in your garden through garden consulting. Gardening can be overwhelming, but our goal as gardenary consultants is to take away the overwhelm and teach you how to garden with consciousness, confidence. We don't just want to help you create a garden, we want to help you become a confident gardener. So if you're wanting to bring your garden to the next level, you want a beautiful kitchen garden design and and get help in your own space. You got to go learn about all the gardenary consultants that have been trained by me inside my Garden Coach Society. Check them out@gardenary.com businesses and at the links in today's show notes@gardenary.com thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.