Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 11 MayNewly planted on 14 May, four young transplants in a row of bags on black slate, their blue-green leaves carried up long pink-flushed stalks with nothing yet formed at the centers — and six novelty signs in hot pink and orange standing among them.Week of 22 JuneOne big waxy blue-gray rosette on 25 June, ten or twelve spoon-shaped leaves off a single low crown with chalk-white midribs and heavily lobed wavy margins, and nothing at the center yet but a tight knot of crinkled young leaves.Week of 22 JuneFive plants of one sowing on 25 June standing at three distinct sizes, from one with five leaves to one whose stem has begun to run up, none of them yet showing anything at the growing tip, and one place in the row still bare but for a seedling.Week of 6 JulyOn 9 July, big paddle-shaped blades under so heavy a waxy bloom that the dew stands right up off them in fat separate beads — the center still nothing but more overlapping leaves, small round holes punched through several of them, in cold blue shade.Week of 20 JulyBroccoli on 21 July, a first head sunk deep in the crown with its buds still separate yellow-green beads rather than a fine blue-green dome, the waxy leaves around it holding the rain in separate round drops under flat overcast light.Week of 3 AugustA broccoli head on 6 August, a shallow dome of a dozen knobs on thick branches out of one pale stalk, the buds swollen and clearly separate now under dusty gray-lilac caps and their stalks lengthening so the surface reads grainy, in side light.Week of 31 AugustBroccoli on 3 September: a dome of a dozen rounded clusters packed shoulder to shoulder with not one bud open anywhere on it, and a wax so complete that the rain stands in separate beads, a few of them run together into lenses. Flat gray overcast.
