Sounds like the plant is buttoning. It happens when the plant is stressed while young and it never fully recovers (it's a big problem with store bought transplants.) Without pictures, it's hard to determine. I run a website about gardening and have pages dedicated to broccoli. Check out the following link: http://www.vegetable-gardening-made-simple.com/growing-broccoli.html Surf through the broccoli pages. They have a lot of pictures of what you should be seeing as the plant grows and I actually used Packman broccoli the year I took the photos for these pages, so this should definitely be what you should be seeing if your plants are healthy. If your getting side shoots before you harvested the main head, then likely the plant is buttoning (sorry, I haven't had a chance to write about that yet so no pics for that.) If the plant is buttoning, it is still edible, just watch the heads and harvest them as you normally would, just realize they will be small. You won't get the 8 inch grocery store looking heads of broccoli. You can also harvest some of the leaves from the plants and eat those. They can be cooked up much like kale, spinach, or swiss chard. I have a recipe on the site for sauteed brussel sprout leaves that is delicious and you can substitute broccoli leaves instead for the same recipe. Good luck! ~Kelly Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable Gardening Made Simple

It's not a big deal if you wait until you see a yellow flower or two. I tend to pour the water too them as they get close to harvest time. The heads grow pretty fast. When I see a flower start to open I cut the head. I'm harvesting a few heads per day now by this system. I'm convinced that I get larger heads by waiting as long as I can. The heat is on though today so I might well have to make a second harvest this afternoon.

Dorothy, In a month I hope you can find some the right size. Some of the Packman broccoli plants I saw in local stores on Monday are already quite a bit larger than I'd let my own seedlings get before transplanting, and I expect whoever buys and plants those large plants will have issues later if we have one more prolonged cold spell, which I do think is likely. Larry, Many of the varieties we mention here on this forum (especially for anything other than tomatoes) are seldom sold in local stores. We focus here on varieties that are "proven performers" in our part of the country, but most retailers carry only varieties, like Waltham broccoli for example, that will perform well over a larger portion of the country. Because our "cool season" is brief here, the plants that grow well over most of the country don't grow well for us or grow better for us in the fall. That's why we are seed-ordering and seed-exchanging fools in Dec. and Jan.----because we already know we're unlikely to find the specific varieties that do well here in the stores. I remember the old days when I was a kid and the local stores sold seedlings raised locally right there in our city, using seed from regional seedhouses in Texas like the now-defunct Gene Porter & Sons Seed Co. and Willhite Seed. Back then, the only varieties you could buy were the ones that grew well in your area. Nowadays, the whole plant market had become more nationally oriented and as a part of that change, the wholesalers/retailers carry a much smaller selection of varieties and try to convince us that we can grow the same broccoli varieties here that thrive in cooler parts of the country, and that's not necessarily true. Packman broccoli is particularly well-suited for Oklahoma and the surrounding states because it produces large heads--roughly 7-9" across, it produces very early--in about 55-60 days, and it forms good sideshoots that you can harvest for a few weeks after harvesting the main head. I've never had any disease issues with it here or in Texas. Packman is available from many, many seed companies--probably from several dozen different ones, including Park Seed, Territorial, Harris, Willhite, J. W. Jung, etc., but I've only seen it in a local store one year, and that store had Willhite seeds and the Packman brocoli was one of the Willhite seed varieties they were carrying. The challenge is to order it and get it in time to plant here because even though lots of seed companies carry it and feature it in the catalogs and on their websites, they often don't actually have it physically in their possession as early as we need it. So, you can order it in Nov. or Dec., but if they aren't receiving it from their wholesale supplier until Jan. or Feb., you won't receive it until it is almost too late to plant it here. I usually order from Willhite and one packet lasts me several years, but I need to order more now for next year because I planted the last of my current pack for this year, and if something happens to the current crop of young seedlings, I'd be in trouble. I think I'll go to the Willhite site and order some in a minute while I'm thinking about it. Ezzirah, Direct-sowing rarely works with broccoli in our climate. We just heat up too fast most years, and by the time the direct-sown broccoli sprouts, grows and is starting to form heads, the heat makes the heads bolt, which means they flower and go to seed. That's why we plant 3 to 5 week-old transplants...because that gives us a 3 to 5 week "jump" on the weather and ensures a good harvest. If we put 3 to 5-week-old plants into the ground in March, we're harvesting in May before the weather gets so hot that it bolts before the heads get big. If your direct-sown seed is sprouting in the ground at the same time many of us are putting 3 to 5-week-old plants in the ground, then your plants will be 3 to 5 weeks behind. While that 3 to 5 weeks doesn't sound like much of a difference, it is critical to success. When we say Packman matures in 57 days, that means 57 days from transplantation. From direct seed, you need to add another 30 days as a minimum, and then you have a 90-day broccoli that won't mature before the heat arrives, unless we have the coolest spring on record. I used to routinely transplant my broccoli into the ground in February, but we always have a prolonged cold spell in March and that would often cause it to form buttonheads. So, now I plant 2 or 3 weeks later in early March, and rarely have buttonheads. I probably could plant broccoli transplants right now if I was willing to put low tunnels over the plants or cover them with frost blankets if a cold spell threatens, but I'm in a low-lying area where late frosts and late freezes are common and I lose patience with planting too early and having to cover up plants over and over and over again. If I were a market grower and rushing to get broccoli into the Farmer's Market as early as possible, I'd plant in February and cover it with heavy floating row covers/frost blankets on very cold nights because the consumer wants early broccoli in the Farmer's Markets. As a home gardener, though, I do not care if I harvest at the end of April or in early or mid-May. Either way, we'll eat all we can fresh and freeze the rest. Park Seed has been around a long time, but has struggled in recent years, filed banktuptcy a while back, and was purchased by a new investor group last year. It is too early to tell if this company will ever rebuild its business to the level it once enjoyed, but based on Dorothy's experience with them, I'd say they have a long way to go. With all cool-season crops grown in the spring in Oklahoma, it is a challenge to get a good harvest because our weather is often erratic and goes from "too cold" to "too hot" in a very short period of time. Therefore, precise timing of your cool-season plantings is of the utmost importance, and you also have to have a bit of luck on your side and some cooperation from Mother Nature as well. Planting something even 1 to 3 weeks "late", or direct-sowing something that performs better from transplants, can give a poor harvest to no harvest at all if the heat arrives just a couple of weeks earlier than expected in May. Planting early has its perils too and often results in cold temperatures forcing cool-season biennials into dormancy and then bolting after warmer weather returnes. One of the hardest things as a gardener in our state is getting the timing of the cool-season crops figured out and then abiding by that planting schedule because Mother Nature often hurls lightning bolts, hail, sleet, snow, torrential rain, tornadoes, wind storms and dust storms at us during planting time. Sometimes I think it is a miracle we get our cool-season crops planted it at. Dawn

hi there jimbob17 looks like you might have had a few slugs too, they might be what caused the marks on your broccoli stems (I can't really see the stems on the photo). If your unlucky it could be a Pathogen, bacterial or fungal.Check out some photos online of Black rot, black leg, black leaf spot and grey leaf spot. If canola is grown near you the likelyhood of these diseases rises significantly. If you don't like what you see, pull up your brassicas and bag them, at the first opportunity burn or tip them. Don't plant them in that spot again for a min of 3 years There are however a number of less sinister possibilities, the aforementioned slugs, with yellowing caused by nutrient deficiency. Do a ph test (kits are usually available at nurseries and produce stores), to grow brassicas you need a sweet soil - ph 6.5 to 7. Another cause of deficiency is water logging so check your drainage (dig a hole fill it with water and see how long it takes to empty, ideally less than an hour in a vegie garden) if drainage is slow build up your beds and NEVER EVER walk on them when their damp. Sometimes broccoli just seems to get tired and lanky you could try cutting off all the old leaves and stems and side dressing with dynamic lifter or blood and bone, or some rotted manure. I"ve had some born again broccoli after this treatment. Be sure to practice crop rotation waiting a few years before you plant any brassica family crops in this spot again. all the best janeymax