"col" wrote in message
...

these autumn plants are _much_ smaller (only about knee-high as you have
said) but the heads & sprouts are good. they WILL flower when the buds are
ready, though, so it's up to you to pick them before they flower.

They are flowering when they are only a few mm wide. Too tiny to eat.

aha... i think you are misunderstanding the plants..? (please correct me if
i'm wrong!!): each little bud will become a flower (as you've observed) but
the buds grow in groups - the biggest topmost group (called the "head") and
the sprouts ("side shoots"). when the head is ready, its stalk will be
perhaps 3cm in diameter, & you cut the whole head off with secateurs. the
side shoots will then start growing vigorously, & you keep harvesting them
(they just keep coming, down the stalk) until they're becoming so small it's
not worth the bother. essentially you are eating masses of flower buds all
at once. each little bud will NOT become a head. but indeed, when the buds
are ready for eating, they are only a few mm wide each at the most, but
there are hundreds of them all together. when the little buds start looking
"loose", they're about to flower, so eat them all up straight away!

hope i haven't misunderstood what you've said here. :-)

Thanks so much for the detailed reply.

that's ok! not everyone appreciates the way i go on & on....

I'm only just starting to get
into growing my own food as local prices are getting out of control
plus never know what you're eating with chemicals these days on foods.

homegrown is best!! ime even though not everything will be truly successful
especially at first or when the weather is weird, it's wonderfully fresh &
you know where it's been. (and no food miles at all). and we can learn more
from our failures than from our successes as well, so we get more success
quite quickly. most veg are fabulously easy once you've read a few books &
got a few tips from people who know better (this group is great for that),
only a few sorts of veg are truly difficult, or are so time-consuming or
low-yeilding it's not worth the bother.

I've enjoyed my fig tree in the last 5 years with really nice big
large red figs which are so sweet and great for jam. We get buckets
load of figs off this one huge tree and have cuttings which are
growing really well since I placed an organic seaweed fertilizer on it
a couple of weeks ago which so far as really made the cuttings grow
much faster than using pot ash. I may try it on a few broccolie plants
later on.

i know lots of peeps who are huge fans of seaweed fertiliser, it has a great
reputation. good luck with your veg, and the figs sound wonderful!
kylie