Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Brassica oleracea var. italica

History: This delicious Italian variety of brocolli spreads your harvest over a much longer window than heading broccolli types and is perfect for the home grower - it is an ancient variety from Roman era Europe and withstands cold British winters with no issue, often surviving and producing for several seasons. It produces cut-and-come-again spears of antioxidant rich, purple broccolli with a richer and nuttier flavour than heading, calabrese types.

When to sow: From late February indoors in modules with transplanting into final positions in June - to April on for direct sowing in their final growing positions. 

Requirements: Nutrient-rich soil, regular watering, and a lot of sun. Some support as they age.

When to harvest for food: Pick the spears as they grow to encourage more to appear for a longer harvest - the leaves can also be eaten while tender and young or cooked when larger.

When to harvest for seed saving: Allow the broccoli florets to grow and flower fully, when they will form green seed pods which you will allow to dry on the plant - cutting them once they contain dark brown to black seeds that are loose and can be rattled around the pods, then cut and them to dry fully indoors before breaking the pods to extract the broccoli seeds

Seed contributors: Omved Gardens

Isolation Needed: Yes

Saving Seed: Most brassicas cross very readily so the first step is to make sure you are only allowing one variety to flower at the same time and make sure the plants are well supported as they flower. Then allow the population of mature plants to flower and mature their seed pods with plenty of airflow and care taken to protect the crop from pests. Once they have fully dried on the plant they can be harvested and the seed processed from the pods through rolling it or bashing the seed in a bucket - 

Number of plants to save seeds from: An absolute minimum of twenty brassica plants is needed to maintain good genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding having negative impacts on the plants, eighty to a hundred plants is much more desirable.

Pollination: Insect pollinated and growing this seed crop is a great support to local pollinators.  

How to send seed back: Please label all seed with variety, type, date and your contact. If you didn't get a chance to fill out our online data collection form, you can also send us a few lines about how it grew for you/flavour etc. Please aim to send back 1 tablespoon of dried seed or more so that we can continue to share with network members. Send to: The Seed Saving Network, Omved Gardens, 1 Townsend Yard, N6 5JF.

Please remember, if you’re an individual grower you can order up to 4 packets of seeds. If you order more than this, you will receive just four packs to begin with. This is to ensure we get plenty of data in return and to keep our stocks sustainable for years to come.* 

*Community groups and Experienced Growers can order larger quantities, please email us if this is the case.

If an item is out of stock we will send a close alternative.