Regarding the freezing, it's the speed that you can reduce the temperature that influences the quality of the produce when defrosted. Rapid freezing creates only tiny ice crystals whereas if frozen down slowly the crystals form slowly and are each larger. This causes the food to expand and when thawed, is 'mushy', stretched by the ice.
Commercially, crops are cryogenically frozen in a torrent of liquid nitrogen at hurricane speeds-blast frozen.
At home ,remove as much air as possible by almost submerging packs in cold water and then seal.The best practice is to cool the crop, then freeze small packs a few at a time, ideally in a seperate freezer already at minimum temperature(region of -20deg C, if you're lucky)
Move them frozen into the storage freezer, continue to freeze until the batch is complete.
Only freeze the prime of the crop, tough broccoli does not magically become young again!
I do not generally 'blanch' ,but only freeze limited amounts. My freezer space is really for game, fish and supermarket meat ' big bargs', (one day short of expiry!)