At last!

For me, it's what makes vegetable gardening worth while. The first picking of delicious Purple Sprouting Broccoli in spring.

This year it's arrived perfectly on time, and we ate our first few spears on Easter Day (with a really delicious roast leg of lamb).

I always sow the 'late flowering' variety; a vegetable that starts producing in April is worth its weight in gold. I quite expect it to continue flowering for anything up to two months. It's just a matter of regular picking (and eating), and not allowing the plant to fully flower. Eventually I leave just one spear to produce it's little pale yellow flowers, I leave it to dry, and save the seed to sow the following year. It always comes 'true to type'.

Quite recently Haddock's looked unbelievably bare and uninviting. Suddenly it's gone bonkers again, and I can already forecast a glut... Still, I'd rather have too much than not enough.