Planting broccoli

For three days this week, we've experienced unnaturally warm March weather, with temperatures in the mid to high 70sF.

This was nothing short of a siren call to get things done in the garden, especially since we had a block of rain and cooler temperatures moving in.

One of the advantages of having the garden fully fenced against deer (at last!) is we can plant with abandon and not worry about things getting picked off all the time.

So I spent a couple of days weeding, topping the beds with compost, raking up last year's leaves, etc. Then it came over me like a thunderclap that it's the ideal time to plant my hands-down all-time favorite vegetable, broccoli.

We really don't have room in the house to do much by way of vegetable starts, so I decided to take a chance and direct-sow them into the garden beds.

But not without a little prep. First, using some of the compost Don brought up a few weeks ago...

...I put a fresh layer on each bed.

Then I dug it in and raked it smooth.

Time to break out the seeds.

Years ago, I got these silly and inexpensive seed spoons that can pluck out tiny seeds of various sizes. I tell ya, these have proven to be worth their weight in gold.

I prepped three beds for broccoli, with plans to plant six seeds per bed in a zigzag formation. To decide on the right pattern and spacing, I stuck a few small sticks in the beds.

Planting eighteen seeds took just a few minutes.

(For those claiming that 18 broccoli plants are too many, you don't understand just how much I love broccoli. I might even plant a couple more beds as well.)

I pulled in some fresh straw for mulch.

Here are all three beds, planted and mulched.

Ah, but I'm not finished. Notice the pile of long white poles on the ground?

Last June, you might recall, I put up a blog post entitled "The Argument for Buying Ahead." Take a moment and go back to read it. Go on, I'll wait.

Now that you're back, I'll explain. Those poles are seven-foot fiberglass poles purchased back when we had money to be used for cloching garden beds. We bought enough to cloche every single bed if necessary.

Unfortunately, these poles turned out not to be the best choice. Bending them is juuuuust a bit more than the fiberglass fibers can handle, and quite often (but not always) they break. If we could do it over again, I would recommend half-inch pex tubing as a nonbreakable cloching alternative. However, since we have so many fiberglass poles, I'll continue to use them and just replace broken ones as needed.

Anyway, my plan was to cloche the broccoli beds even before the plants sprouted. Each bed takes four poles: One at either end, and two in the middle. I start by lining them up on one side of each bed.

Then it's a simple matter to bend the poles and tuck them into the other side of the bed. Since these poles are fiberglass, gloves are critical so I don't get tiny glass shards in my hands.

But what to cloche the beds with? Ah, that was another purchase we made during our "purchasing ahead days" – garden netting. I purchased a bulk amount of seven-foot-wide netting, enough to cloche every single garden bed if necessary.

This was the first time I've had the opportunity to use it. The first thing I did was measure how much each bed required.

Eight-foot beds, two-foot-high cloche hoops, and enough netting to drape generously down each end came out to fourteen feet of netting for each bed.

So I laid out the measuring tape on the porch to fourteen feet in length.

Then I measured out the netting and cut it to length, repeating this step for the three beds.

This draped beautifully over the poles and thoroughly cloched each bed.

I staked the netting down with U-stakes, yet another one of our "buy ahead" purchases a few years ago. We bought a box of 5,000 of these babies and use them all the time.

The stakes puncture through the netting easily. This also might mean it will tear holes in the netting after a while, so I'll have to be vigilant for this possibility.

This is what the broccoli beds looked like when I was finished, all cloched and staked.

Why did I cloche the broccoli at all? It's because broccoli (as well as other cruciferous crops) are highly susceptible to flea beetles and aphids, both of which can decimate plants within days. I speak from experience. It's painful to watch my favorite veggie get eaten down before I have a chance to harvest a single bit of it.

These are flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that can turn a healthy plant into a lacy skeleton of its former self in a matter of days.

A few years ago, I was watching a gardening video by an Australian gardener who said that 90 percent of gardening pests in raised beds could be controlled or eliminated with the judicious use of net cloches. That was enough for me (in those heady days of having surplus income) to order poles and netting. This is my first opportunity to use the netting.

Last year, I planted two beds with broccoli. The flea beetles got them all. This year I planted the broccoli in different beds in hopes that my favorite vegetable will escape a similar fate.

Time will tell.