Bolting Brassicas

You've been harvesting lots of kale and mustard leaves. You've been waiting on your broccoli to form a full head. But all of a sudden, you notice these beautiful yellow flowers coming from the brassicas growing in your raised garden beds now that the weather is warming up.

These dainty yellow flowers mean your broccoli is bolting, your kale is going to seed, and your mustard greens are coming to the end of their life cycle. Your plants are now focused on producing seeds for the future.

There are three things you can do when your brassicas start to bolt, depending on your needs, your space, and the time you have left in your kitchen garden for the season.

Let the Yellow Flowers Be

Your plants will send up central stems that can grow four to five feet tall, and these stems will be covered in flowers. They'll lend a slightly wild feel to your garden that I, for one, just love. Even better, the fragrant flowers will attract pollinators and other beneficial insects. I always leave bolting plants so their flowers will bring bees and butterflies into the garden just as my fruiting plants need pollination.

Bees especially seem to love the yellow blooms, and that's because there's a lot of them on just one plant. Bees can get their fill of nectar from just one bolting brassica plant.

Save Your Own Seeds

If you leave your flowering broccoli plants in the garden long enough, the flowers will dry up and the leaves will die off. After about 30 to 45 more days, you'll have pods filled with harvestable seeds for next year.

Remove the Plants

The leaves of your kale and mustard greens are still edible once the plants bolt, but the plant is so focused on going to seed that it won't produce more leaves for you ever again.

So if you have limited space in your garden and want to plant for your upcoming growing season, you always have the option to pull the plants from your beds as soon as they start to bolt. Use a hori hori to cut the base of these plants, leaving their roots in the soil. For broccoli, cut just below the flower head to encourage the plant to produce some side shoots for you before it's done.

Don't toss the flowers into your compost if you're removing the plants. Kale flowers are not only edible—they're actually pretty delicious, and the same goes for broccoli and mustard flowers. You might have heard of broccoli raab or kale raab. These are just fancy names for the flowering tops of brassica plants, and they're considered a cullinary treat.

Sauté your kale flowers with some EVOO, salt, and pepper. Toss raw mustard flowers into a salad for a peppery punch. Make a buttery garlic pasta with broccoli florets.

When you grow your own veggies, you get to try something new and enjoy more parts of the plant than what you can buy from the grocery store!

Don't Cry Over Bolting Plants

The garden is constantly evolving and producing new things. Instead of being sad that your kale plants are done, be happy you have beautiful yellow flowers for pollinators to enjoy or seeds saved from your garden to share with friends. Even if you pull the plants, you now have empty spaces that you can fill with bush beans or basil or whatever you'd like!

Happy growing, my friends!