Soft Rot in Broccoli

The above photo was taken June 22. We had a lovely crop of broccoli coming along. We had rain from mid-May until mid-July with only a couple of brief breaks. The garden weeds got out of control, some plants drowned, and the corn and peas fell over. The broccoli got soft rot :(



When you notice the head of broccoli changing from a beautiful green color to kind of yellow-brown-green, it's already quite rotted inside. It stinks to high heavens. I harvested all of my broccoli as soon as I realized what was going on. We enjoyed about three meals with fresh broccoli and I froze four or five quarts, but I threw away at least as much as I salvaged.


I left the stalks in the ground, hoping the side sprouts would be okay but they were awful. I pulled all the stalks and tossed them in the compost pile. That was probably a mistake, as soft rot is caused by a bacteria and I don't know if composting will have any effect on it.

In retrospect... I had planted about four plants from transplants, from seeds I started indoors. The others were all planted directly into the garden. The transplants did great and were harvested before the heavy rains, cabbage loopers, and webworms appeared. I'm going to try another planting of broccoli for fall harvest and see how it does. Next year I'll either plant transplants or grow broccoli as a fall crop. I may use BTk to get rid of the cabbage loopers and webworms, too. I'm trying real hard not to use anything other than soil amendments this year, to learn what my pests are and if good guys move in to take care of them. Lots of learning going on in this first-year West Virginia garden!

On the bright side, it's the first time I've succesfully grown any broccoli to harvest.