Photographs of this planting through the 2026 season, oldest first.
The photographs
Week of 1 JuneA young brassica on 6 June, matte blue-green under a faint waxy bloom, its broad rounded leaves crisped and buckled along the margins and threaded with a netted tracery of pale veins off a cream midrib, still damp in soft shadowless daylight.Week of 8 JuneA four-leaved brassica just planted out on 11 June, thick and leathery and matte blue-green under a waxy bloom, a finger-dug hollow still beside it in the raked mix, with raw sawn timber and cobwebs behind in soft indirect light.Week of 22 JuneNine young plants set out in a block on 25 June, every one at exactly the same stage, five to eight waxed blue-gray blades over chalk-white midribs and a growing point still no more than a crinkled tuft, with a weed run up to flower among them.Week of 22 JuneA Green Magic broccoli on 27 June with its first head cradled between the leaf bases, a dome of dark blue-green beads on short thick stalks, every bead holding a clear droplet and one long smear of water lying across the blades around it.Week of 22 JuneA Green Magic broccoli on 27 June, tiny leaflets pushing up between the beads of the head where the leaf stalks converge, one blade above it torn clean through and another bleached pale, all of it soaked and standing in no shadow at all.Week of 6 JulyGreen Magic broccoli on 9 July, its head still tight and fine-grained at the center of the rosette with no yellow anywhere in it — the blue-gray leaves holding fine mist across their faces and fat coalesced drops down each ivory midrib, in soft flat light.Week of 6 JulyGreen Magic broccoli on 9 July, its head still loose enough to count the separate bud clusters and not a petal yellowing yet — the waxy blue-gray leaves spoon-shaped and holding dew in fat beads down each ivory midrib, low sun throwing long shadows.Week of 6 JulyGreen Magic broccoli at cutting stage on 9 July, the dome knobbled into sub-clusters of buds each tipped purple-brown and two or three pale bracts pushed up between them, nothing opened to yellow — the waxy leaves holding dew in big round drops.Week of 6 JulyGreen Magic broccoli on 9 July, every bud in the dome holding its own bead of dew until the whole head reads silver — blue-green around the rim and warming to yellow-green through the sunlit middle, a few buds already loosening apart, in soft even light.Week of 6 JulyGreen Magic broccoli on 9 July in pre-sun light with no shadow anywhere in it, one small cluster of buds low on the head already yellowed while the rest holds its gray bloom — the droplets not standing on the leaves but hanging in a row off their edges.
