Page 12 - SV 3 2024

Overwintering broccoli in our cold greenhouse
EMILY HARRIS FNVS
We grew some Atlantis broccoli plants out in the garden in the spring/summer last year, and the crop was so enormous that we trialled it overwinter in our cold greenhouse. That was also a success, so we wanted to keep experimenting with overwintering it in our cold greenhouse. The seeds we grew are a King’s Seeds variety, one of the NVS’ sponsors, but also a very local seed company to where we live in Essex.
The crop we grew outside in 2023 was sowed on 28 February and planted out in the garden on 16 April. We have included a photo to show how heavy cropping it was – we got a basket full like this every other day for almost a month from just a dozen plants!
Therefore, we thought we’d give them a try in our cold greenhouse over the winter this year.
As a reminder, Atlantis is a brokali (part broccoli and part Chinese kale). It produces long tender and juicy stems of broccoli, and as we mentioned, was very heavy cropping.
We sowed the seeds on 5 October, pricking them out a week or so later into three-inch (7cm) pots in multipurpose compost as we do with all our brassica plants. They stayed in these pots, making sure to keep the compost moist until 2 December when they were planted out in the greenhouse.
The plants gradually grew over the winter months, and we watered them as necessary. They were also given some chicken manure to encourage leafy growth and strong plants.
We started harvesting them around mid- April, which followed our crop of purple sprouting broccoli in the polytunnel nicely. At the time of writing (the third week in April), the harvest is ramping up, and the plants promise to deliver a crop akin to last year’s. That being said, it is finally(!) due
to start warming up in the coming weeks, so it will be interesting to see whether the crop is as long lasting or whether the plants start to get too hot and begin to go to seed.
We find that broccoli plants are relatively low maintenance, and they make good use of the greenhouse which would otherwise lay empty during the winter months. They also produce an early crop of broccoli and are a welcome break from the supermarket broccoli heads that we revert to during
the winter months when homegrown vegetables are less plentiful than during the summer and autumn months. We also often grow some spring greens under cover which seem to produce a good early crop for us.
It also makes a change for us not to have to cover our brassicas with netting to stop the pigeons – they haven’t learnt how to get into and out of the greenhouse (yet!)
12 Simply Vegetables