broccoli seed mismarked?

[JRinPA]

Are these broccoli? The big plants in the middle.
The pots are supposed to be broccoli surrounded by "Kolibri" hybrid semi-savoy spinach. The spinach is correct, but we're not sure about the broccoli. It was dollar tree seed. I thought it was broccoli seed, and the cotyledons looked right, but now...?



In pic2, that one just had its leaves stripped for salad! There is definitely some confusion, here!

[clkeiper]

looks like a lettuce plant to me. it appears to be smooth. if it is bristly it is a mustard.

[rxkeith]

some kind of mustard green or asian green if you have them.
definitely not any kind of broccoli i have ever grown.




keith

[JRinPA]

it look pretty similar to the turnips, but the leaves aren't hairy. Leaves don't taste great. Bought four packs, used 2-1/2 just to quadruple seed 20 soil blocks. Then used the other pack and a half to direct sow backups. All look the same, but I have not seeds left.



I had already sworn off dollar tree seed last year due to extremely small counts and varying quality.

[Hensaplenty]

Agree that it's some kind of mustard. Looks like Holland Greens.

[bower]

That looks like chinese cabbage to me. Don't give up on it.... they can be really nice!


Aw oops, just saw you said the leaves don't taste great. hahaha.

[greenthumbomaha]

I'm with bower except to me it tastes good. It looks like my Michihili cabbage leaves. I eat the leaves raw in salad with lettuces. Apparently it won't form a head as it send up a stalk when the temps went form 40'sto 90's.


- Lisa

[JRinPA]

The leaves tasted terrible raw. Very bitter is the best I can describe. They look a whole lot like turnip leaves, but these are smooth instead of hairy. You can see in the 2nd pot pic from above, there IS a broccoli growing next to the cut off leaves. These were soil blocks with four seeds per block. That broccoli plant must have germinated very late out of the block, long after the block itself was planted in that pot. I do remember being quite proud of myself for getting this seed germinated so quickly. No heat mat, under lights only in the basement. Multiple sprouts in each block after just a couple days, AND I managed to keep them from growing super leggy. That is just how awesome I am at starting seeds! Or so I thought!

These came up quickly, but it was very late to start broccoli (Mar 25th) and basically I sprouted them under lights and put them out the next day. I honestly never really thought about them much and when I was working that area of the bed, it was for weeds only and deciding which of these to cull one at a time.

Next year I will plan on broccoli from the start and focus on good strong transplants. The day after I planted these I found a thread here on tomatoville about "planting in a 3/4" hole". Between that, and actual broccoli seeds, I should be golden. Right?

I took more pics the other day. It was not just four pots, it was a good chunk of raised bed as well. I was not going to post them, but now I will UPLOAD MY FAILURE. Maybe they will help you figure it out. They were coming along nicely! One them even had half a leave eaten off...probably a groundhog that spit it out immediately. You can see in pic 6 and pic 8 there is a boatload of turnip growing there for leaf harvest and then thinning; the leaves look very similar, but feel much different.

But it is all moot, now.

Yesterday I pulled those impostors, wiped out the inter-spaced spinach and volunteer tomatillos, laid down the black woven mat I bought this winter, burned a grid of holes with torch, picked it back up and ran drip tape, and finally threw my eggplant in there. Seventeen Epic eggplant in a 3 wide diamond with I want to say 18" spacing. Well, three of those are actually planted in the spinach rows, I didn't see a reason to wipe that spinach out, yet. I will weave the eggplant as I have been for the last few years. I had been trying to figure out where to put these eggplant, so in way, everything worked out fine. Except, no broccoli this summer, save that late one little guy...perhaps the only actual broccoli seed in four entire packs.

[bower]

LOL deterrent for groundhog. I must say there's enough taste variation in the brassicas for me to imagine how bad it can be.

Yes, Lisa, me too! I grew Michihili last year and we loved it. Very sweet and mild with lovely crunchy ribs, we mostly ate the leaves raw in salad. The outer leaves were on the hairy-prickly side, but the rest were primo.
"Napa cabbage" is a close relative that has smooth leaves, and the ones my friends grow are also a primo sweet and fantastic vegetable. They keep incredibly well - you can store them in a root cellar for crisp eating all winter. They have a much milder flavor than a regular cabbage, so a bit more versatile.