Yellow flowers on broccoli plant

[Tedisateddybear]

I planted some broccoli seeds last year which didn't really work. One of them poked through the soil and this year has grown to about 3ft tall. I've noticed over the last couple of days that there are yellow flowers now at the top of the stem. Silly question but is this normal and will they still produce broccoli further down the stem? I'm new to growing from seed and not doing very well so far.

If they've flowered that is the last phase in the cycle. Am assuming at this time of year it was spouting broccoli in which case the stems are harvested at probably max 5-6 inches long. But, you can still eat it, including the flowers, you may just find the stems are a bit tough! It's possible they've also bolted because of the very dry weather we've had (depending on where you are of course!)

And don't worry! Gardening is trial and error. You can know all there is to know about gardening and still have successes and failures. Much better to learn by doing once you have some basic ideas and then you can see what works in your garden, what you like to grow, what you have time to keep on top of etc.

Was it purple sprouting broccoli and it's now gone to seed?

The broccoli is the flower buds which if left unpicked will open to yellow flowers. If you pinch off the flowers that you have, it will produce new clusters of flower buds in the angles of the leaves. They'll not be large shoots, but you will be able to gather them to eat.

You can also eat the flower buds of other cabbages/kale in the same way.

Thank you @WheresMyClint, @hedgehogger1, @MereDintofPandiculation.

It just goes to show how bad I am at this game, I meant to type Brussel sprouts, not broccoli!!

All the cabbages tend to grow for a period, then produce flowers and seeds, and then die off. If you're lucky, they will have hearted up (cabbage) or produced sprouts, or whatever, before they flower.

If you didn't get any sprouts, you can save something by eating the flower buds as if they were purple sprouting. You can probably eat the better leaves, cutting out the tough stems and perhaps rolling them up so it's easy to slice them very fine if you think they'll be tough.

Could it be rapeseed? We had a random one spring up in our garden a few years ago. They are part of the brassica family so the leaves look similar, and rapeseed is just coming into flower in the fields round here now.