Plant Profile- Spigarello (Leaf Broccoli)

Sometimes when you have just about given up on finding true love the next day that special someone wanders into your life unexpectedly and things will never be the same again. Or in this case rather than special someone, that special plant.

I had grown various kinds of kale in my older more intensive gardens for many years from seed I bought from various sources further south in temperate Australia. I quite liked the taste mixed into other dishes but was especially impressed by some varieties ability to last several years. Cavalo nero or Tuscan kale was especially good at this, and the thick wrinkled leaves held up long into the hot, dry seasons. Its longevity meant that it survived summers and burst into tender growth as soon as the cool rains of autumn arrived. But there was a problem.

I wanted to have kids but Tuscan kale was not interested.  So I waited patiently, hoping they would change their mind with a little time. My kale gradually grew older and weaker, one year one plant even produced a spindly flower stalk in the roasting heat of summer that promptly withered away. I knew it wasn’t going to work out. Would I ever find a kale to call my own? Would I be stuck buying seeds from far away forever (or at least until the seed companies stopped offering them). I had a dalliance with collard greens on the side but even they weren’t interested in flowering despite their supposed subtropical origins.

Then I noticed an odd listing in the gardener’s personal ads (some random seed catalogue). Leaf broccoli: upright plants with kale like leaves, tastes like broccoli. I added them to the order expecting it to be just another waste of time. They grew like Tuscan kale and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they did indeed taste like broccoli, not that cabbagey funk of kale. I didn’t dare hope that this would be the one, so I just waited patiently. I didn’t have to wait long because they flowered quite convincingly at the end of their first spring. The seed set was quite spotty but I had enough seed to start a new generation next year. Better yet the plants didn’t die off after flowering, recovering after a light prune to produce excellent leaves in late summer. This is very valuable to me since it means I get good quality greens very early in the season when all the recently sowed annuals are still many weeks away from any harvesting. This dynamic is kind of the mirror image of people in cold climates treasuring early spring perennial crops like asparagus that produce when not much else is available yet.

I should point out why this is the only Brassica oleracea I grow any more. This species includes kale, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts and kohl rabi, such is the plasticity of the original wild species that it has been moulded into every imaginable form. The original species is closest to kale, with each subsequent transformation relying on severe inbreeding that results in weaker root systems and greater difficulty in maintaining the remaining vigour when saving seed. The reason why all these variations exist is to meet the needs of storage and transport, just like the cardboard tomatoes of today. Cabbages are designed to store for months on a shelf in cold climates where outdoor vegetables freeze solid. Broccoli and cauliflower are designed to withstand transportation in an ox cart to city markets, while kale will often go limp by the time you get it to the kitchen. Only with the invention of refrigerated transport trucks did kale come back on the menu for city dwellers. On my creek flats where the topsoil is deeper I had grown quite convincing cabbages and cauliflowers and I grew decent broccoli in my intensive gardens. Once was enough to convince me they were a waste of time. All these crops demand much more inputs and better conditions than the kale like forms. In a climate where we can grow fresh greens year round cabbage makes no sense. And for home growers the transportation advantages of broccoli make no sense either. In addition the condensed heads make risky targets for pest issues. One caterpillar outbreak close to harvest time renders the crop mostly destroyed, while kale will simply regrow new leaves later and can be left alone until predators catch up. The demand for heads of cabbage or broccoli to be picked on their schedule also bothered me. Finding you are two days too late and everything has run to inedible flowers is annoying after investing so much in the crop. I can harvest kale types whenever it suits me without penalty. Finally all the different forms of Brassica oleracea can hybridise and make weird mutants, so only growing one form makes life a lot simpler.

I have since combined three different sources for spigarello in order to get a little more genetic range, with plants varying in the degree of ruffling in their leaves. This is the first big crop I have grown, with about 30 plants. They were grown as seedlings started in small pots (tubes) since the amount of seed I had was too low to risk direct sowing. The plants also are a little slow to get started, meaning they are vulnerable to pests taking them out a bit longer than other crops. They were sowed in January, ready for transplanting out in March. They gave good harvests by around May, but other faster growing crops with shorter harvest seasons like Ethiopian kale make more sense to rely on at that time. Now about half the plants are flowering heavily with a few making heavy seed set, so next season I will try direct sowing (with a set of tubes as a back up for any gaps). I am still harvesting thick blue leaves from the plants not yet in flower, just a few filled out yet young ones per plant at a time, to keep them growing and strong for flowering later. Their strength will also be reserved for that crucial late summer/early autumn harvest.

It is a fine line to walk between knowing when to give up on a hopeless cause versus keeping your mind open to possibilities you may not have even imagined yet. As my zero input farm progresses I feel like I am getting better at striking a balance between a bulk of tried and true favourites combined with a sprinkling of new experiments. Most of these end in disappointment but that just leaves room to try a couple of new things next year instead. Spigarello is now a firm favourite and I hope I can convince other subtropical gardeners to give it a try.

A spigarello in full flower with heavy pod set

Two leafy spigarello still contributing to regular meals