Now This is a Head of Broccoli

I have been watching this head of broccoli grow for the past few weeks and have stopped myself from harvesting it on more than one occasion.

I am glad that I did.  Today I decided that it had grown enough. so I cut it off the stalk right beneath the head.  The stalk itself was at least 3 inches thick, maybe more.  I brought my prize inside and proceeded to trim off the large leaves and set them aside for the chickens.  When I balanced my final product on the scale it read 3 lbs, 1.6 oz.  Amazing.

This broccoli seems to hold up well to the heat seeing as it's been in the 90's every day for the past few weeks and it never even thought about bolting.  I believe it is a variety called Atlantic.  Perhaps I will plant more of these in my garden next year since they seem to be quite productive.  From this one head I was able to blanch and freeze about 13 servings of broccoli for myself.  Just imagine if I had ten of these plants!

The other variety of broccoli I planted was called Waltham.  This variety didn't take long to start bolting, but once I trimmed off the main stem, they have started producing side shoots which I will freeze if I ever get enough of them to make more than a single meal at a time.  They have been nice in stir fries and salads, but I don't think they will match the hefty weigh in that I had with the Atlantic.