Romanesco broccoli: A bad idea in the making

Have you ever started something and thought, halfway through, what a bad idea it was (by which time you were too advanced to go back?). This year I decided to plant some winter greens. I’ve got so little space in my tiny urban garden that I usually only grow soft fruits and summer vegetables but this year the blackthorn bushes were irritating me by growing at a snails pace in their raised sleeper bed and so I rashly decided to fill their raised bed with broccoli, leeks and a bit of kale. So I planted some romanesco broccoli seedlings and set about removing the top layer of (cat deterrant) gravel on the bed. Halfway through, I knew this wasn’t going to work. The soil is just too full of stones now. And the useless blackthorns have put out surprisingly wide webs of roots. And I don’t have the patience. So I bunged the lovely broccoli seedlings in and hoped for the best. A few days later, they had established themselves rather well but they’re all stuck together in clumps and after I’ve thinned them out, there are going to be very few left. Gah. The whole thing was a stupid idea.