Broccolini has become a very fashionable vegetable in recent years, often seen on the plates of high-end restaurants and fetching a premium price in grocery stores. But what exactly is broccolini and can you grow this trendy crop at home? If you in a backyard vegetable garden, you know it has a short season. You get one main head to harvest and then hopefully a few more side shoots will follow.
However, the joy with broccolini is that you get a bounty of bite-sized stalks and heads over a long harvesting period. I grew and harvested broccolini for chefs at a Michelin-starred restaurant when I ran a walled and have seen first-hand how productive the plants can be. My plants were grown from seed in a greenhouse and planted in late spring to give a long harvest of delicious stalks.
See how you can grow broccolini too. Broccolini is an annual plant in the Brassica family and a hybrid between European broccoli and Chinese broccoli, also known as gai lan. It goes by many names, including tender stem broccoli and aspabroc, but is often known by its common name of ‘baby broccoli’.
The crop resembles traditional broccoli but produces many small shoots rather than one large head. The entire plant is edible, including the florets, stems, and leaves. If you want to add broccolini to your growing list for this year you can buy transplants from garden centers, nurseries, or online to garden.
Alternatively, you can add the crop to your and grow broccolini from seed. It is best to and gr.