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

I had good luck with broccoli this year - more than my meat-eating family wanted to eat! (I just couldn't eat that much myself). However, with our -finally - warming weather, most of it has gone to flower. Still a few young ones that are weathering it OK, but our temps are still in the 60-70 range, so the bulk of the plants have bolted. I left a few flowering ones, because I noticed the bees preferred them, and as I just planted beans, peppers, tomatoes, squash - was hoping they would visit those nearby, and help with pollinating. I think I'd toss the plant otherwise, it is just taking up space, unless you want it as a pollinator, the crops it produces will be inferior I'm afraid. Also - I have a few of last years peppers that wintered over, and the Poblano is producing some nice, small peppers - which we are enjoying, but I feel it is better to start new peppers, rather than depending on them perennially. They also take up space as perennials, and I prefer to plant something else in their small cubicle in my box. Bejay

Yeah, forget jonhughes posts! He's got veges on steroids! LOL Most of the broc you grow won't be quite that large and healthy. Farmerdill's photos look more like what I grow. It's hard to explain how they look when they're getting ready to flower. It's kind of like the buds "swell" and seperate. They aren't in such a tight head anymore (am I explaining this right?) As Wayne said, check them daily. They keep pretty well in the fridge, but are best fresh. Nancy

Our very first freeze was two weeks ago. It went down to 23. My broccoli leaves (uncovered) were burned, but the plants made it. Heads were not damaged. I did, however, put row cover over them after that. I really want them to make it all winter. I like the side shoots even better than the big heads. Personally, I wouldn't take the chance. It just doesn't take much time to cover them.