Arcadia Broccoli

Impressive. I had to call hubby and tell him to bring the camera when I saw the size of this head of broccoli. Pictures do it no justice -- it's a full 1.5 pounds! Alice Waters would pay me $10 bucks for this head of broccoli, for sure! For folks wondering who the hell Alice Waters is, she's an activist/local food chef for the local/organic food movement for many, many years. She owns an up-scale restaurant in California, Chez Panisse, since 1971 that sells only local food for which you'll pay $95.00 a plate to eat there! We saw her on 60 minutes, and she left the impression money is no object -- so what if people pay $4.00 a pound for grapes... or $10.00 a pound for chicken which left a very sour taste in hubby's mouth about organic food pricing.) Back to the broccoli... my harvest is huge this year - every head is this big and I have 36 plants. That's a mere 54 pounds of broccoli I'll be harvesting. We'll be eating broccoli every way imaginable. Yes, I'll freeze some, but as little as possible 'cause it gets bitter in the freezer. Anyway, its much better fresh. Here's the blurb from Fedco on the variety. Broccoli is one of the few plants that you have few choices of varieites - I'm aware of only 15 or so varieties (compared to 1200 tomatoes!) which is very unusual in the plant world. For many years, I grew the "packman" which is very common. I read Arcadia needs highly fertile soil to form nice sized heads - I guess it likes my dad's horse manure! And the flavor is incredible -- absolutely delicious, not bitter. I will always grow Arcadia broccoli -- there will be more in the fall! I'm hopeful my new fall garden will produce these babies for Christmas dinner.