The verdict is in: rapini is worth growing and will have an annual, early, place in my garden. This is notable because I have written off a lot of similarly so-called "early" or "cool weather crops". The name makes you think they grow well in chilly zone 4, but we don't actually have a cool growing season. We have a freezing season and a smouldering season, and about 3 weeks of cool weather between on either side. Obviously many people grow broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower here, and in a given year you can usually find me giving at least one of them another shot because the dream is strong, but for me they bolt more often than they produce, and they take up a lot of space to produce one harvest. Rapini is more promising because it grows SO fast. Unlike "early" crops like peas and favas that don't ripen here until late June or July, an early rapini crop is done by mid-June or earlier. You can rip them out and transplant something else, or do as I did this year, and seed them in a bed with a later-planted, slower-growing annual that won't need all the space until later.
Also known as broccoli raab, and often confused with broccolini (understandably) rapini is actually a closer relative of mustard than broccoli. You can eat the leaf, stems and buds when tender, basically the whole top of the plant. It is common in Italy and Italian food and is our favorite homemade pizza topping and my favorite accompaniment to David Tanis' pasta e fagioli adaptation. This year I finally prepared rapini the recommended way (ahem), blanching it for a few minutes before transferring it with tongs into a heated saute pan with olive oil and garlic. I tend to frown on blanching things because I can just see all those nutrients seeping into the water, but rapini has an overly bitter edge that blanching turns to perfection.
I grew rapini for the first time in 2016. I got Quarantina seed from Fedco and started it inside sometime in March. It turned out that was a bit early for the way things ran that year, and by the time I planted it outside it was thin, tall and tough, and never really recovered. I seeded more directly, as recommended (ahem) and that did okay but started bolting in the heat before I got a very substantial crop. I think I ate some by myself for lunch a couple of times late May through mid-June and that was it. Still, it was enough to make me want to try again.
Also known as broccoli raab, and often confused with broccolini (understandably) rapini is actually a closer relative of mustard than broccoli. You can eat the leaf, stems and buds when tender, basically the whole top of the plant. It is common in Italy and Italian food and is our favorite homemade pizza topping and my favorite accompaniment to David Tanis' pasta e fagioli adaptation. This year I finally prepared rapini the recommended way (ahem), blanching it for a few minutes before transferring it with tongs into a heated saute pan with olive oil and garlic. I tend to frown on blanching things because I can just see all those nutrients seeping into the water, but rapini has an overly bitter edge that blanching turns to perfection.
I grew rapini for the first time in 2016. I got Quarantina seed from Fedco and started it inside sometime in March. It turned out that was a bit early for the way things ran that year, and by the time I planted it outside it was thin, tall and tough, and never really recovered. I seeded more directly, as recommended (ahem) and that did okay but started bolting in the heat before I got a very substantial crop. I think I ate some by myself for lunch a couple of times late May through mid-June and that was it. Still, it was enough to make me want to try again.
Then, during the long winter nights of garden dreaming, I found an article on the Mother Earth News site from 1983, in which the author mentioned direct seeding rapini in her tomato bed and pulling it out before the tomatoes got big. This year my tomatoes are in my longest bed. On April 14th I planted a mix of seed I'd saved from my crop last year, and the rest of the Fedco seed from the year before. It all came up great. The photo is from May 6th. May 17th they were just starting to show the signs of their first central heads and just thinning out my thick planting I made an abundant side dish that amply fed 5 adults (along with that Tanis pasta e fagioli, of course - but I have yet to remember to take pictures of that).
Unfortunately, I had to leave town for two weeks a few days later, and I took my number one and two garden babysitters - my mother and my husband - with me. I was 90% sure my plants would be bolted by the time I came back and I was right. After a prolonged cold snap, things got really hot, and on top of that, confusion among my watering team meant things got pretty dry while I was gone. So when I came back I was greeted with a long bed of tall beautiful yellow flowers actually shading my tomatoes. No one puts my tomatoes in the shade, so even though I had 24 hours to pull off a 5-year-old's birthday party while jet-lagged, I chopped off all the tops immediately. I made a huge bouquet of the flowers, and stuck a couple pounds of leaves in my fridge that made two more meals. A few days later I got around to uprooting the rest of the plants, and added some more leaves to the bag in the fridge from that. All from basically free space. If I can actually stick around to harvest the heads before they bolt next year, I think I'll get much more. And that's why rapini will be a regular in my garden.
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