

Broccolini is still a fairly new vegetable with several suggested planting seasons. Once the seedlings germinate, thin them to at least 5 to 6 inches apart. Place the broccolini seed in a 1/4 inch deep hole and lightly cover with soil. Follow the steps for successful soil preparation: Add well-rotted manure and compost like Seasol Super Compost to the soil and dig it in to a depth of 20cm. If the soil doesn’t drain easily, create raised soil mounds to plant the seeds or seedlings into. For these plants, the purpose of the cover is not extra heat but protection from flea beetles (see pests). Hardening off is a process that allows your broccoli seedlings to get used to the temperatures outside. Sow them directly in rows of 12 to 14 inches apart. Broccoli can be grown in sandy to clay soils, providing it is free-draining. It should be kept on for 14-16 hours per day. The light should hang a few inches above your seedlings at all times (move the light up as they grow taller). So be sure to add a grow light as soon as they begin to emerge from the soil. Something similar is also commonly done for broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, collards, and related plants. Broccoli seedlings growing indoors need a lot of light, or they will stretch and grow leggy. Once they’re that big, they can live without the extra heat. When the plants are about 10 cm (4 in) tall, you can dig them all up and transplant them into rows so they are about 60 cm (24 in) apart. If, for example, you want to create warm growing conditions for basil seedlings, you can plant 50 or 100 seeds very close together (say, in a square 60 cm/24 in on a side), then cover them with a cold frame (see season extension techniques) or a floating row cover. They will stay small and will not produce much of what you want (leaf, fruit, root, etc.).Ī variation on thinning is the planting of plants in a small, dense seedbed. If you don’t, the plants will be too close together and will compete with each other for light, water, and nutrients. If you plant seeds densely, it is very important to make sure that you do thin the plants out. Water the bed the previous day before removing the Broccoli seedlings to. Beets, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, melons, and squash are among the plants that cannot be pulled out and planted elsewhere. The seedlings are ready to plant out when they are about 10cm(4) to 15cm(6) tall. In other cases, the plants you pull out should just be added to the compost pile. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, and their relatives fit in this category, as do a variety of other plants.
BROCCOLI SEEDLINGS FULL
Full grown broccoli plants grow quite large and their leaves need room to spread out, so be sure to give them enough space. In some cases, the plants that you pull out while you’re thinning can be transplanted elsewhere if desired. Plant seedlings about 18-24 apart in rows about 30-36 apart. If you plant them close together, they help each other with this sometimes very difficult task. Seeds also must literally push their way out of the soil.

It’s much better to plant seeds thickly and need to thin the resulting plants than to plant seeds far apart and find that too few of them have germinated to give you the crop you want. While you may think you don’t want to waste seeds, seeds are generally inexpensive.
