i plan on planting broccoli this year..

sooner grandmom when do you plant yours??

Very soon, I think. Of course that is inside under lights.

Carol,

I read the first edition of Eliot Coleman's book but that had to have been 20 years ago or longer, and I don't remember that planting 4 broccoli plants together like that was mentioned, although it could have been. Or, it may have been in the 2nd edition published about 15 years ago, but I didn't read that one. I barely remember what I had for dinner on Friday night. Anything further back than that is iffy.

My gut feeling is that you'll get smaller heads and, with our heat and humidity in May, plants crowded that close together might be prone to have fungal or bacterial disease issues. Has Jay grown them this way before or is it his first year?

With that kind of crowding, I don't think you'd get sideshooting. I rarely wait around for sideshooting and just yank out the plants after I harvest the main head and succession plant purplehull peas in that space.

Even biointensive gardening guru John Jeavons, who plants closer than most people, recommends planting broccoli plants 15" apart in all directions. Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening recommendation is one plant per square foot. So, to me, 4 plants in one planting hole sounds ridiculous. However, I know people who plant 2 tomato plants in each planting hole, and they are perfectly happy with their production, so who knows?

I have planted the smallest broccoli plants, like Small Miracle and Munchkin, usng 8" spacing and got even smaller heads than they generally produce with 12 to 15" spacing, so I cannot imagine 4 plants in one hole givng you much of a yield. You'd have to be really careful to give them adequate moisture or they'd stress really easily. Plants that close together would be fighting for their share of the water, don't you think?

Dawn

I think I planted about 15 inches apart last year but like this:
x---x---x
--x---x--
x---x---x

The bed was full but they didn't seem to be too crowded. The heads weren't very big, but I think I could have left them a little longer than I did. We were eating them fairly fast, but the weather was getting so hot, that I finally just cut the rest and froze it.

I can't find Jay's article now, but he had a picture of a young plant, and said that it was four plants planted together. It was already in the ground, but it looked like maybe it was created by planting 4 in a six inch pot or something about that size. The remark said like Eliot Coleman does. I don't remember the numbers but he said he could plant something like 250 in the same space he had planted 140 or something like that. I was going to write to him, but his email doesn't show. I think the picture was from last year and I think his intention was to get more heads rather than larger ones. I have seen pictures of some he grows in his hoop houses and they were huge.

I thought if it was in one of EC's books maybe someone could email me what it said because I was curious. After looking at the names of my EC books, I have "The New Organic Grower's Four-Season Harvest and The Winter Harvest Handbook", but I don't see anything like that in either one of them.

I'll wait until I see him posting on another thread, and hi-jack it. LOL

Carol,

I did a Google search using "JRSlick Gardenweb 4 broccoli plants" and found the thread I think you're talking about. I've linked it below. Of course I read it after I found it. It might be fun to plant one row of broccoli using your normal spacing and a second row using the 4 broccoli plants in a hole with 24" spacing and see which row produces the best.

I do agree that the yield he gets in his high tunnels seems remarkable. I am sure the added protection from wind and cold temps plus the warmth his plants get from the greenhouse effect contribute to the high yields, but also think he was a really good gardener before he started using high tunnels too.

Dawn

Carol, I did some searching on the net cuz I was curious about this method, too, which would be especially grand for me growing in a smaller space. I am now intrigued and encouraged by what I'm reading. Thanks for bringing this topic to the forefront.

Sources I've read suggest this method is addressed by Coleman in two different books, Four Season Harvest, and Organic Gardening. The method originated in Europe and has now caught on here in the States. There appears to be a growing interest in this method as I found at a lot of different sources in my search.

The concept is to sow several seeds to a pot or soil block, or whatever, and transplant them together, saving space and efforts on seeding, transplanting, weeding, harvesting, and, for the market grower, marketing.

It all began with onions, and if soil is nice and fluffy, the growing bulbs will push away from each other and the end result is nice big bulbs with less effort to produce them. Yes, you might get somewhat smaller ones, but the payoff is in greater harvest in less space for less attention.

They do need to be transplanted quicker, need more water because of the density of planting area, and it recommends they be buried deeper in the soil (onions).

This site also gives you suggestions about how many seeds to plant of various crops, including broccoli, cabbage, cucumber, melon, peas, beet, corn, leeks, spinach, turnips, bulb onions, shallots, and scallions (bunching).

This looks like something I will likely try.

Scroll down the page to the subtitle "multiplanting".

I guess if "bigger is better" is your motto, this may not work as well. For the small space gardener I see it as an opportunity to increase harvest.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Multiplanting Techniques

Thanks Dawn. You forgot to link, but using your words, Google did find it. It is sad when the same words in GardenWeb's search engine can't find it on their site, but Google can. I normally use Google in that situation but forgot to try that last night. That is the only way I can EVER find anything at Lowes.

That is one thing that I like about Coleman, he writes from his experiences, but is always open to new methods. I guess when he has enough new methods, he just writes another book.

Susan, I am not aware of one of the books you mentioned, but do have the other one. I know there is one on Tools and Techniques, but I haven't read that one. Anything he writes is worthwhile in my opinion, although he gardens in Maine.

Dawn, just think how many experiments we could do if we just had more space with good soil?

Our air temp is up to 48 degrees at noon so we should get some more melting today.