[digalotty]

i had some calabrese seedling given to me last year and they grew into lovely plants and flavour was good but i dont know the variety

[kippers garden]

I love broccolli and i lost all my PSB over this winter as it rotted in the cold weather.

I once grew the broccoli that they sell in supermarkets one summer under enviromesh and it looked wonderful, however flies somehow got in and i couldn't get them out and when i boiled it after soaking in salt water over night and washing it several times i still had flies floating up in my saucepan...i know alot of you will probably say that flies add meat and won't do you any harm but i'm sorry i couldn't face eating it or giving it to my kids

[SkipRat]

I grow calabrese and PSB, I harvest all the calabrese heads in one go to go in the freezer, after the heads have been cut the calabrese will send edible side shoots, bit like sprouting broccoli, which we pick through out summer. Throughout winter we eat the frozen Calabrese. Then its the turn of the PSB, except this year we wont be eating it as the blummin frost claimed it  .

[Kimberley04]

Stompy,go for F1 varieties of calabrese. I agree that calabrese is a better choice over broccoli,but please avoid the cheap seed called 'Green Calabrese'...its rubbish in my opinion and has produced blind plants when I've grown it before. Fiesta is a good variety and one I would rely on to produce a good head of calabrese for the table

What's a blind plant ?

[Yorkie]

The head on a cauli is actually a flower.  'Blind' means without flowers - i.e. no cauliflower, just leaves

[Gandan57]

I have six packets of seed and they all say broccoli but the pictures are very different:

Wilko  Early purple sprouting.
Suttons  Summer purple.
Mr F`s  Extra early rudolf.
T&M  Brokali apollo F1 hybrid.
T&M  Romanesco.
MrF`s  Beaumont F1.

Hopefully they`ll all taste good!