I don't think you were wrong at all in believing they were bolting when the heads started getting loose. Once they start getting loose, they are just a few days away from blooming. For what it is worth, you can harvest and eat the loose heads, and even the flowers if you catch them and cook them on the first day the flowers open. I think the problem lies in purchased transplants. I always had trouble with my broccoli bolting when I purchased transplants instead of raising them from seed. Yes, to a certain extent bolting is caused by the hot weather, no matter whether you are using your own home-grown transplants or purchased ones from the store. However, other factors contribute to bolting and that's where the purchased transplants come into play. Stress of various types, not just the air temperature, can cause broccoli plants to bolt. One example of the kind of stress that causes this would be drought/moisture stress, especially in combination with warmer air temperatures than broccoli likes. When you purchase transplants, they're often rootbound and they've often been allowed to get too dry before being watered. Those are other stressors that can cause bolting. I think they when the broccoli seedlings are rootbound and their growth stalls, being biennials, they loosely interpret the stall in growth as dormancy. Then, when they are put into the ground and eventually overcome being rootbound and start growing again, they "think" (well, plants don't think as far as I know, but you know what I mean) it is their second season and is time to make seeds...so they quickly bolt. Poor nutrition also can lead to stress and poor production/bolting. I call broccoli a "garden diva" because everything has to be just the way she likes it or she won't form heads. In the years since I began raising my own broccoli transplants from seeds, I hardly ever have broccoli bolt until late May....and by then I've already harvested heads or am about to harvest them. This year's weather is horrible for cool-season crops that need to grow and mature in cool temperatures because we started hitting the 80s and even the 90s in March. There's not much you can do to combat that. This year's weather reminds me of the early 2000s through about 2005 or 2006, when we went from winter cold to summer heat with no mild weather in between here in my part of the state. After a couple of years of having everything bolt or produce poorly, I quit planting all cool-season crops for a few years except onions and potatoes. It was pointless to try to raise a crop like broccoli that prefers temps between 45 and 75 when we were having late winter and early spring highs in the 80s and 90s. Once the winters began acting more 'normal' with a slower transition from winter to spring to summer, I started planting more cool-season crops again. If only we could "know" in February if the weather would stay cool and mild for another 60-90 days or if we were going from winter one day to summer the next, then we'd be able to plant cool-season crops with some reasonable assurance they'd make a crop, or decide to skip them because it was getting too hot too early.

I live in a small (10-unit) self-managed co-op. There's talk of whether we're going to be required to install sprinklers in the basement laundry area (we have 2 gas dryers, and 2 washers). It's not a definite enough thing that I feel comfortable asking a plumber to give up his time and give us a bid, but i wondered if anybody here knows. How much would it cost to install sprinklers over those dryers? I don't think we need them anywhere else. And of course, the water pipes are right there; everything's bolted to the walls, so easily tapped.

No we won't agree because you are blaming the failure of a fastener on the specification and/or the engineer who set it when it is the stupidity or ignorance or incompetence of the person torquing the fastener that is causing the failure. Don't confuse field experience with production line experience. Production line sequences are detailed down to the last movement. If the torque spec calls for anti seize then it is applied and torqued to the correct spec for that circumstance. If the sequence doesn't call for anti seize then there is none at the assembly point and the torque spec is correct for that circumstance. If the loose nut on the end of the torque wrench does not understand the specification then they should put down the wrench and back away. If they are being paid to tighten the fastener then they should be fired when the fasteners fail in the field if it is not correctly torqued. Service manuals are not a how to, step by step, instruction guide for DIYers. Tech writers write service manuals expecting the reader to already be a competent mechanic and often leave simple universally understood (by professionals) steps out of a procedure. If there's no instruction to use a thread lubricant and one chooses to use a thread lubricant like anti seize that choice should be accompanied by the knowledge of how to use it. When we're talking about what one does to their stuff in their own garage that's a different story. If the dry torque spec on a flywheel bolt is 100 ft lbs dry and one wants to use anti seize one has to modify that torque spec for the use of anti seize. If one doesn't understand that then a resulting failure is their fault whether one was lazy, stupid, ignorant , or incompetent and not the fault of anti seize or the engineers who set the dry torque spec.

crh, The yard looks great! You're too far west for the snow, so that's good. However, your area of Texas has a Red Flag FIre Warning today. I guess that means you have the unfortunate combination today of high wind and low humidity. At this time of the year, the weather doesn't like to leave us alone to just have a pleasant, mild day very often, does it? My favorite days are the days when none of us have any advisories, watches, warnings, etc., but those days are fairly rare. Kim, I didn't mean to scare you. The TX panhandle is a big place and I'm glad the snow is staying north of you. Yes, cold weather can come really late there, sometimes shockingly so, but I wouldn't let it keep me from planting in a year like this. In a warm year, the odds are more in your favor that the cold won't come back. In a cooler or colder year, early planting becomes more risky but it is a risk a lot of market gardeners will take anyway because of the need to have bountiful harvests by the time the markets open. It is April on the southern plains, so of course we are going to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown at us, weather-wise. At least we are safe from tsunamis here. (grin) Dawn