Transplanting Broccoli

The winds have died down and the weather is warming quickly so it seems like a good time to transplant the first of my early started seedlings.  The broccoli has developed strong roots and has gotten big enough to hold it's own in our fickle Colorado weather.  It was time to move it to it's permanent home in the garden.

The bed it was going into was turned over last fall and mixed with a healthy dose of leaves that composted over the winter.  The soil was still soft and crumbly in this bed so I only had to level it with a rake and set up the drip lines and the bed was ready to be planted.

The first thing I did was figure out the layout that I wanted for this bed.  Broccoli can get quite large when it is happy so I try to give the plants enough room to grow.  Ideally the spacing would have been closer to 18 inches between plants, but I staggered them so they would fill in the bed when they are fully grown.  They are a little over 12 inches apart in this layout.

When they went into the dirt I spread them a little wider where I could and I think they will do well in this bed.  The gaps between each plant were filled with a few fast growing crops of beets and turnips.  I am hoping that I can harvest these things in just a couple of months before the broccoli takes over the bed.  While they are growing they will be a bit of a ground cover to help control weeds in the beds.  I also planted a handful of carrot seeds in the gaps of the middle row.  The carrots will probably be a crop that I harvest much later in the season, probably after the broccoli is done for the year.  I like to plant carrots throughout the garden where I can since they don't have to be harvested at any particular time.  They store in the dirt quite well and they generally get sweeter after a frost which makes for a nice treat in the fall.