My quest for the perfect Christmas broccoli

I adore broccoli, but I despise seeing it shrink-wrapped and kidnapped in the grocery store. The sight of those slightly compressed, yellowing florets sweating under fluorescent morgue lighting is a rude tap on the shoulder from dystopia.

That’s why I was in my basement in late August, cleaning out the propagation tent while everyone else was still at the beach.

My goal each year is to enjoy homegrown broccoli with Christmas dinner. In this corner of the Mediterranean, that’s about as likely as a French civil servant answering the phone after lunch. But with precision timing and bloody-mindedness you can pull it off. And after years of suffering those supermarket specimens, I’m determined to.

My first real broccoli came from my grandfather’s garden in Shropshire, England when I was eight. Packed off to give my parents some peace toward the end of the summer holidays, I can still remember the sweet and nutty taste of the broccoli. Forty years later, I’m still chasing that memory – except now I’m attempting it in the deep south of France, where the locals think I’m deranged.

Mid-October is when village gardens here enter hibernation. The neighbors’ tomatoes are done, the last melons have liquefied in the weeds and the French – true to national instinct – down tools entirely. Even the old boys who usually loiter by their potagers vanish into their wine cellars.

But I’m out there with my squadron of “Marathon” and “Green Magic” seedlings, started under grow lights earlier this month. The margin for error is narrow. Too early and they bolt in the lingering heat. Too late and the cold hits before they’ve formed heads, leaving them in vegetative purgatory until February. If cabbage white moths breach your defenses, you’ll be garnishing Christmas dinner with steamed baby caterpillars. Wait for a spring planting? Hopeless. The heat always comes too soon.

After this summer’s brutality, I’m happy to return to cool-season gardening. The sun stops trying to murder you, mosquitoes surrender and the garden becomes habitable again. But mostly, I persevere because it irritates my fellow villagers. Especially Yannis.

He materialized at my gate, summoned by the news that the Englishman was trying too hard again. I remember when a mutual acquaintance first mentioned him: “You must meet Yannis – he’s a permaculturist!”

I vowed then to avoid him. “Permaculturist” in these parts means “organizer of perpetual garden meetings” – lofty communal aspirations that only ever exist in PowerPoint. Mercifully, he vanishes for months on “humanitarian projects” in Africa, returning just in time to explain everything you’re doing wrong.

He wandered in, uninvited, to inspect my late-season tomatoes, still producing thanks to obsessive care. “Tomates encore?” he asked, grimacing without tasting one. Like so many Frenchmen, Yannis diagnoses problems without evidence or solicitation.

Ignoring my vigorous young broccoli – their blue-green leaves already showing that vitality you never see in stores – he zeroed in on a half-full sack of peat I’d been using as a knee cushion. He tutted and wagged his index finger inches from my face. Unless you’ve experienced this cultural absurdity, it’s hard to grasp an adult deeming this appropriate behavior toward another adult. But I live in France and incredulity keeps me out of jail. Next, he spotted my admittedly over-engineered tomato frame – built to outlast civilization but supporting plants that never reached halfway up. Then came his coup de grâce: “Attends, mais tu ne pailles même pas?” – essentially, “Don’t you even mulch, bro?” That pushed me over the edge. “Ça va ton jardin?” I snapped.

Of course, he doesn’t have one. I watched an initial flash of irritation give way to the realization that it was time to bugger off. And off he buggered – all the way back to N’Djamena. I’ll think of him distributing laminated composting guides to nomadic tribes while I’m harvesting broccoli heads the size of softballs.

Come December, when I cut into one of those heads, the stem will snap clean, releasing the cold-green scent of chlorophyll and victory – nothing like the slightly fetid ghosts rotting in the grocery store. The florets will be tight as a secret whispered only once, that profound blue-green that seems to hold the light. Steam them for exactly four minutes and they taste of hazelnuts and rebellion.

The locals slow as they pass my gate, craning their necks at the “exotic” bok choi and the militaristic rows of winter leeks. They rarely comment, but their disbelief is palpable. Most of all, I do it because getting my hands on real broccoli in the winter feels like pulling one over on the system. It’s an almost illicit pleasure.

And when Yannis inevitably drifts back in spring, my rows will be perfectly mulched, the last winter broccoli on my plate, and it will taste like I’m back in Shropshire. Some things are worth looking ridiculous for.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.