Purple sprouting broccoli

Purple sprouting broccoli, or PSB for short ~ is sometimes called asparagus broccoli.

Cook PSB up as you would asparagus or broccolini, a light steam or gentle sauté with garlic is all it really needs. As its a purple colour, with those purple anthocyanin pigments, sometimes it can be a little more fibrous towards its stem.

Spring 2022
This years PSB is an experiment. Last years was a wonderful open pollinated variety, this years is a hybrid variety bred in part by the one and only Phil Griffiths who we keep banging on about.

Some of these PSB’s come up almost to our chins, their leaves are lush and their stems are crunchy and their florets are sweet. This variety is huge! The florets are more tender than last years, the plants are just gigantic and the big leaves are juicy to eat.

We don’t see much cultivation of PSB in the general market place because it needs to spend so much time in the ground. I't’s one of our favourites to grow, we hope to have it in the CSA for at least three weeks all going well. A short and sweet season until next year. Enjoy PSB like you would broccolini ~ the entire stem is a tender delicacy. Its brilliant steamed, roasted, sautéed and blanched.

15 September 2021

We’re really happy to welcome Purple Sprouting Broccoli ~ into this weeks box.

The Eastern Mediterranean and particularly Italy, is considered the hot spot of the world for genetic diversity of brassica oleracea. PSB is one of the fantastic vegetables that belong to this group. PSB is still a pretty wild crop and hasn’t received a lot of attention from modern plant breeding until recently. Its genetic diversity lays in landraces across the Mediterranean.

PSB requires a period called vernalisation to induce budding, the parts we eat. Vernalisation is a period of weather cumulatively at or below 10C for 6 weeks or so. However PSB also winter-kills below -7C. Most modern plant breeding work on PSB focuses on crosses with cold tolerant collards. The aim is to improve PSB cold tolerance so that it can be grown more widely.

Here in southern lutruwita we have a wonderful cold/mild climate well suited to this special vegetable. We hope that we’ll be able to include PSB in the box more over the next month.