Flowers in the Vegetable Garden

A week of rain, a weekend of Gasparilla fun and a week of working late equaled two weeks with no time spent in my garden (other then water during the dry week.)  Add to that a February week with highs in high 70’s and I ended up with lots very pretty yellow flowers in my broccoli.

 In addition to the yellow flowers I found another exiting surprise in the garden today.  About a third of the carrot seeds that I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted.  They look like little green hairs. 

According to the seed packet you are supposed to thin them out at this stage but I think I’m going to give them another week incase the squirrels have already thinned out the other 2/3’s and decide to thin these out for me too.

Last weekend I did manage to snap a few photos of the garden’s progress.

 A week later it looked like this.

 I wasn’t sure what the consequences were of the yellow flowers on the life broccoli plants.  Did it mean they had bolted and were done for they year?  I also wasn’t sure if they were okay to eat.  I had a pretty good guess that at the least I’d have to cut the florets off. 

I did a little research on the Internet and according to numerous sites the little yellow flowers and the remaining florets aren’t poisonous and the plants might still have a little life in them.   A few sites noted that the flavor might be slightly off.   If the warm weather continues though, it will be the end of my broccoli so I decided to try what was left of the florets with dinner.

I picked off the flowers and put the broccoli in the steamer.

And it tasted like… broccoli.  The stems were tough but the florets tasted like “normal” broccoli.  

I also pruned the collard greens today and cooked them all day.  My once full garden looks a little empty but that’s a story for another day.