Today we had a new arrival in the family, I am very excited.  This all started back in April, which was a very long time ago…

I went to the garden centre, who had everything I needed to plant my winter vegetables, there were carrots, beetroot, spinach, leeks and much more. Plus this time and I purchased, something I had never purchased before, it was a tub of six seedlings of purple sprouting broccoli.

Now I have pretty good success with my vegetables (yes I do have my failures, carrots are something that have never thrived, but cut me some slack), I make my own compost and worm tea (well the worms make that, but you get the gist). I had grown broccoli many times before, so I was fairly confident that this purple sprouting variant (a word we shouldn’t use anymore) should be a doddle.

Anyway the days went by my broccoli plants grew and grew and grew, they grew so much that had taken over a significant part of the garden, one plant grew to over four foot tall, but no sprouts of broccoli appeared.

After about three months I started visit the plants on a daily basis, then I started talking to them.

After about four months and increased ridicule at home I was put under pressure to pull out the plants and replace them with a plant that would yield a harvestable crop, I refused.

I was informed by The Wife that we can eat the broccoli leaves, but if that really was a thing, why aren’t there ‘Broccoli Leaves” on the shelves at the local greengrocer.

After five months of tending and nurturing the offending brassicas, father’s day came along and The Daughter made me a father’s day card with a cartoon of broccoli head with huge biceps and the caption was some quip about expectation vs reality.

The pressure was really piling on to end the latest traumatic experience to have undeservedly earn the “gate’ suffix, Broccoligate (doesn’t even make sense) was beginning to consume me, I upped the visits and conversations to twice daily.

Eventually I emailed the plant doctor at the garden centre enclosing photos (of the broccoli) reassuring them that I wasn’t on the hunt for a refund of the original $3.99 purchase price, but just some guidance about where it all went wrong.

Tracey the Plant Doctor came back to me and said “Wow that is a very large broccoli plant!” Which wasn’t very helpful!

Tracey went on to advise me that I had a potassium deficiency (well not me, I have a banana every day, my potassium levels are just fine), but my soil required potash to be added and whilst I wouldn’t see any crop this time round it will help for next time.

That was it, the ladies of the house started chanting “TEAR OUT THE BROCCOLI”, I was harangued and belittled at every opportunity, but I wasn’t going to give in, this had become my raison d’être and would not be my Waterloo (okay maybe that’s taking it a little far, but you get where I’m coming from). 

Then after I had all but given up almost a full six months after I first mixed in the compost and planted those little seedlings, walking past the plants on this very day, about a week without talking as we had been on non-speaking terms (me and the broccoli that is, not the ladies of the house, they never stopped talking)… I saw him there, sprouting out so proudly, we called our new arrival Brock and he was delicious as were his many siblings that followed.

Unfortunately those siblings only arrived on one of the four plants (the smallest one) and the rest were ripped from the ground without ever producing anything to nourish its owners (no I’m not eating broccoli leaves).

What’s the point of this story, well I guess it’s about resilience and perseverance.  Chances are if you are reading this, you already have a good grasp of those or you are about to need them. I’m not trying to claim that frustration over vegetable growing is comparable to other challenges in life, but it’s a feel good story about how resilience and perseverance can get you through to the little wins and hopefully the big ones. It’s also a story about how I will never grow purple sprouting broccoli ever again.