Brussels Sprouts
 

First time grower, dont even know the variety as the local nursery just had them tagged "brussel sprouts" and didnt know what they were. Anyway, they are at the 102 day stage and are in a spot that I will need come Late February. The sprouts on the plants now range from pea to marble size. I have read where you can cut the top off of the plants and the sprouts will mature quicker. Should I do that now or give them another 30 days?

I'm not an expert by any means. We don't top the plant but remove some of the first bottom sprouts. This seems to promote the growth of the sprouts above them. We harvest from the bottom moving up the plant starting in the fall when temps start to cool right through the winter.

Brussel sprouts are a cool weather veg and tend to struggle with warmer temperatures. We have two plants that are under three feet of snow somewhere in our garden can't find them just now. When we do they will be just fine

Duane, I'd be interested as well in knowing if topping them makes the existing sprouts mature faster. I have had variable success here in Missouri getting mine to mature before the hard freezes strike. One of these days I'll figure out when to plant them out...

Well, I have 6 plants total, which is plenty since I am the only one here that eats them. 5 in the ground and one in a container. I went ahead and topped off a couple of them today. Will see what the effect is in comparison to the ones that I didnt top off. I sure am looking forward to tasting home grown brussel sprouts. Interestingly, the plants in the ground are a little taller and have more overall sprouts than the one in the container, although the sprouts are a little more developed at this point in the lone container plant.

If need be, you can move it to another area until ready. I have moved with sucess becuase some plants can take up a lot of real estate and when they get big, i need to move plants around sometimes. I have a few inpromptu beds near the compost pile.

first timer here. i am planning on starting to plant brussel sprouts and wondered if from seed makes sense or if it is much more difficult. not sure where i would get plants here in northern VA

Mine were from seed. Make sure to mark them, as they are a bit of mystery until a few months later. I had no idea what they were until fall.

Brussel sprouts need loads of time to be ready to pick. You need to pluck off the bottom leaves. They are very heavy feeders. They get better as time goes on. We ate 7 meals for a family of 5 on just 7 plants.
Here are what mine looked like about 2 weeks ago.

[IMG]http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f346/IMISSCOLO/agarden003.jpg[/IMG]

[quote=hawks;114959]first timer here. i am planning on starting to plant brussel sprouts and wondered if from seed makes sense or if it is much more difficult. not sure where i would get plants here in northern VA[/quote]


I always start mine from seed. They're no more difficult than cabbage or broccoli. You want Brussel sprouts to mature in cool/cold weather for better flavor, so you have to figure backwards as to when to start seed. I start my seed in the late June-early July time frame, which I think is a little late for here (early June would be better). Even in early June the weather can be quite warm here and the bugs can be fierce, so I start mine indoors (incubator to germinate, then under lights) in the basement, where it is cooler. The times I've seeded directly in the garden the poor young things have gotten chewed up pronto. But your mileage may vary...

[B]-bump-[/B]

I have never grown Brussels sprouts and am planning on doing so this year.

I'm looking for variety suggestions and growing tips from anyone that grows them here i.e. how many plants, when to start, fertilizer needs etc. I've also seen seed commercially available for two red varieties, Falstaff and Rubine, which looked particularly appetizing.

I've eaten locally-grown sprouts bought from local farm stands in the past and sometimes they've been very bitter - not sure what causes this but I'd like to avoid it, if it's variety-related. From what I've read so far, they benefit from a frost prior to harvest.

While I don't know much about growing them, I [I]do[/I] know how to eat them. I steam mine with French tarragon and then serve them in butter flavored with brown sugar and bacon bits... delicious. :roll:

they grow easily from seed- it is very important not to start them too early. as previously noted some cold weather improves the flavor considerably. starting too early also subjects them to mid-summer pests that lessen in the fall.

churchill from johnny's is an easy to grow variety...

I've got some Jade Cross growing right now in 10 gallon containers. I bought them as seedlings in mid December. Boy they are slow growers! Allthough I've noticed they have start to pick it up. I just hope to get some sprouts harvested before any spring heat wave. Here are a couple pics of my Brussel Sprouts.

[IMG]http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z144/sprtsguy76/Picture029-2.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z144/sprtsguy76/Picture027-1.jpg[/IMG]

Damon

[QUOTE=Ruth_10;115061]...I start my seed in the late June-early July time frame, which I think is a little late for here (early June would be better)....[/QUOTE]

Similar timing here. I went to a master-gardener demo a couple years ago where the person said she'd finally, through trial and error, figured out that she had to start seeds in July to get the plants big enough before winter. She also said the nurseries don't sell seedlings early enough, so the only way to get a good harvest here is to grow them from seed.

Back when I started my garden, I planted seedlings that didn't produce anything edible, but became wonderful trap plants for aphids:)

i grew bs 2 maybe 3 years then i gave up. bs require an entire season to produce a small crop, a very low product yield vs the space & the time required to produce 1 picking. in the space i'd grow 12 bs plants (i used to grow 12 or 18 depending upon what else i needed space for) i could grow 25 or 30 gonzales cabbage plants. gonzales cabbage tolerate crowding, produce heads that are ~ 3 pounds and mature in 55 days allowing 3 plantings per year. that is a LOT of cabbage! do the math, unless you have a lot of space cabbage vs bs is like an elephant vs a flea re yield volume. another downside to bs is wind, they can be blown down then they curve and are not growing straight and then crowding their fellow bs plants. when i grew bs aphids would show up like crazy! a good blast from the hose cleaned them off but just another issue imo.

bs get sweeter after a few frosts like broccoli, i never picked them before november.

i'm not saying don't grow bs i'm just pointing out that while i like to eat them i find them impractical to grow but my garden is only 1200 sq ft. cabbage yield a lot more food and much easier to harvest.

Once you have eaten home grown Brussels sprouts you will find the store bought ones bitter and inedible. Just don't over cook them no matter how you want to prepare them they are better tasting if you stop the cooking process before they get soft all the way through.

I always grow mine from seed which I start in late summer or very early fall indoors in the air conditioning. The seed do not germinate well in hot temps. Keep them in the air conditioning until the temps drop a little then move them outside. They are slow growing compared to things like broccoli and cabbage so don't give up on them because they are being outpaced by the other plants. When they get about 5 to 6 inches tall I put them out in the garden leaving about 2 feet between plants in very heavily amended soil. They need a lot of fertilizer. I try to give them a dose of Miracle grow with some household ammonia added to the liquid solution every two weeks. If they are not given enough fertilizer they grow way too slow and don't get big enough to produce heavily in the early spring.

I also start removing some of the lower leaves as soon as I see sprouts forming but don't pinch out the top until about two weeks before the warm weather arrives. Frequently they will benefit from staking them when they are about a foot tall to ensure they grow upright.

I have found a variety that works well for me in our warm winters called Bubbles. The only place I have found it is Reimer Seeds. It is smaller than many other varieties and makes much earlier than any other variety I have tried. They usually get no larger than 2 to 2 1/2 feet tall and the sprouts are not as big as most other varieties. The upside is they are much sweeter and they are much faster producers than the others. They also don't take up nearly as much garden space. Since Bubbles Brussels sprouts are quick producers I try to stagger my plants so that I have a couple of plantings at different stages. The reason for that is with our uncertain winters and sometimes very early springs and very late falls it is almost impossible to time setting them out at the ideal time. I have found that every year is different and instead of being frustrated by timing them wrong I try to increase the odds with the staggering.

b54red
I have grown Brussles Sprout from seeds the last two seasons. They did better the first year as it was a cooler season. I plan on planting them again as we love them.

My question is why do you use household [B]ammonia [/B]with the fertilizer every two weeks.

I sometimes add a little just to give a small boost of nitrogen above what is in the Miracle Grow. This is just an easy way to add a little nitrogen to the liquid solution since it is not easy for me to apply a good side dressing of nitrogen. I have also used a little Ammonium Nitrate dissolved into the fertilizer solution when I have it. This is mainly for the Brussels Sprouts which seem to really like a little extra nitrogen. I used to use chicken manure and would just scratch a little around the plants and then water the heck out of them.

I apply to both the soil and the foliage. Just make sure it is very dilute; I use about a 2 tsps to the gallon and give the soil a good drench. If applied in too concentrated a form it will burn most plants.

I did an unscientific test a while back in two identical raised beds. Both were amended with composted manure, cottonseed meal and alfalfa pellets. One bed of Brussels sprouts got the extra fertilizer every two weeks starting at plant out and the other just got a good watering. The results were conclusive for me since the treated bed produced nearly twice as many sprouts in the same period and the sprouts themselves were of a larger size to match the larger plants. I think the main reason the treated sprouts did better is because the plants grew faster and reached a good size before the spring weather got too warm. As soon as the temps get too high down here the sprouts will not form a tight head but instead make a loose little cabbage like thing between the stems.

Thank you all for the replies, advice and recommendations. Hopefully, more folks here will be encouraged to try growing them this season.

Like spinach, Brussels sprouts have an undeserved black eye in the minds of a lot of folks. This is likely due from either being served them over-cooked as a child or eating some that were harvested before they had a chance to develop sugars from exposure to a light frost, i.e. bitter tasting.

Another reason they have a black eye is because they really are difficult to grow successfully. I've been growing them for nearly 25 years and for many of those years had little success. Down here where winters are usually short it is a real challenge to get the plants growing and out in time to take advantage of the cool weather. Timing is critical in every aspect of growing Brussels sprouts from the seed starting to the cooking and if you are off in your timing it can be a disaster. Despite all that I grow them every year and have been fairly successful for the past 5 years. So it only took about 20 years to get it right. The reason it took me so long to figure it out is for years I used bought plants and almost every time they were only available when it was too late. Occasionally we would have a very late spring and I would be blessed with a good crop and that kept me trying. This year it has been one week shy of 6 months since I started my seed and I would guess that I am still a couple of weeks away from picking the first sprouts.

Best planted early and picked late. Last year I cut all the stems 11/6 or so, before a 19F night. We have too many freeze/thaws around here to leave them out. I am sowing seeds indoors today.
My experience:
Jade F1- Planted early last year and plumped up uniformly
Oliver F1- Planted out a bit late, they were uniform, mostly small, but sweet. Easy to pick.
Long Island Imp- Less uniform than the hybrids, sometimes I just get leafy tufts where the sprouts should be.

All plants were beheaded mid-end september

It's beginning to look like this might be a bad year for Brussels sprouts this year down here. We have had weather in the mid to high 70s for over a week now and even the nights are barely getting below 60. This is not good for them forming sprouts. If the cool weather doesn't come back soon then it will be too late. Of course it could be great for tomatoes.

[QUOTE]So it only took about 20 years to get it right.[/QUOTE]

So maybe I'll get it figured out before I die, after all!;) I will have to try the fertilizer boost.

I put out lots of BS plants this year (started from seed) and got none. Zip. Here in Missouri it's neither warm enough to winter them over (we can get some very hard freezes, early) nor do we have enough snow to insulate them from the freezes. I grew them successfully a number of times in Michigan and would go out in the middle of winter and dig them out of the snow and they were just fine. But we love them enough to keep trying.

We've planted, over the last ten years,
Bubbles
Diablo
Mezzo Nano
Oliver
Jade Cross
Long Island Improved.

Agree with David M that Long Island Improved is not as nice as the hybrids. Ditto for Mezzo Nano.

I just finished eating a bowl of BS for an evening snack. They were purchased from the local grocery chain, which had them for $1.99/lb, which I believe to be a good price. They were delicious! I boiled them until just tender and then served them with a pat of butter and some salt. I'm thinking I might try sauteeing some in a skillet, perhaps with a touch of honey or sugar, to get a nice carmelization.

My favorite way to eat brussels sprouts is in winter soup. I use one or two kinds of dried beans, some grains (usually barley or rice), fill teh big pot to the halfway mark with water, bring it to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer. While it's simmering, I cut up at least 5 or 6 types of vegetables -- carrots, celery, onions, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts cut in half, parsnips, beets, etc. -- and add them, enough to fill the pot. It lasts a few days, and I invariably pick out the brussels sprouts first if I'm looking for a snack. They're perfect, silky and with just the slightest edge of bitterness. I add extras each time, cumin or chili powder or curry or tomato paste or whatever, to make it a little different.

I've never seen the purple or red varieties at farmers' markets here, but it'd be fun to grow them!

I LOVE brussel sprouts, even from the store, but don't buy them because they're not organic. My efforts to grow them from seed have had dismal results despite the area they occupy in the garden for such a long time and the bt spraying they need. Reading these posts leads me to believe I didn't fertilize enough, nor did I top them. Now I'm tempted to try again, but it'll have to wait until I control my tomato growing a bit and have some room for them.;)

Ooh, Ruth - try sauteeing some in a skillet with butter and garlic (or oven roasting)...

Ruth and Kath, I think you should try starting them from seed in mid to late fall and taking them inside during severe cold and when it gets near the end of winter plant them in the garden and make a cover out of plastic for them so you can cover them if it gets below 26 or 27 degrees for more than a few hours. That way the plants will be fairly large by the time spring gets there and they should have time to make. I would definitely use Bubbles because of their ability to make faster than most others and they are not as large so it is easier to keep them covered with adequate air space around them to protect them. Our problem down here is it can go from the 20s to the 80s in a few days. Sometimes we don't even have a spring, just winter then summer. That is what it is looking like this year. My Brussels sprouts are between 12 and 15 inches tall and it is already hitting 80 degrees. If it stays that warm the sprouts will not form.

To make an easy to use cover for protecting the plants just get some pvc conduit or black flexible water pipe. Cut it in lengths that will form a hoop about a foot above your plants and push the ends into the soil for support. Put one about every 5 ft down the row or bed and then just roll a piece of plastic over it and weight it on each side and the ends. You can open the ends on days over freezing but below 50 degrees to allow it not to get too hot if it is sunny. If it is cloudy you can leave the ends closed unless it gets above 65 or so. If the days heat up over 50 and it is bright and sunny you may need to loosen one side and roll it over and put it back over at night or when the temps will once again be well below freezing. It is kind of like making a small greenhouse for your Brussels sprouts. If you like them as much as I do then it is worth the trouble, and it is a lot of trouble.

All this talk about Brussels Sprouts is making me want to try growing and
eating them. My county agent told me to start them between Sep 1 and Oct 1
But I'm wondering if he means setting out the plants at that time.
I may get me some seed and plant some in august to see how they do for me.


[QUOTE=b54red;201711]Ruth and Kath, I think you should try starting them from seed in mid to late fall and taking them inside during severe cold and when it gets near the end of winter plant them in the garden and make a cover out of plastic for them so you can cover them if it gets below 26 or 27 degrees for more than a few hours. That way the plants will be fairly large by the time spring gets there and they should have time to make. I would definitely use Bubbles because of their ability to make faster than most others and they are not as large so it is easier to keep them covered with adequate air space around them to protect them. Our problem down here is it can go from the 20s to the 80s in a few days. Sometimes we don't even have a spring, just winter then summer. That is what it is looking like this year. My Brussels sprouts are between 12 and 15 inches tall and it is already hitting 80 degrees. If it stays that warm the sprouts will not form.

To make an easy to use cover for protecting the plants just get some pvc conduit or black flexible water pipe. Cut it in lengths that will form a hoop about a foot above your plants and push the ends into the soil for support. Put one about every 5 ft down the row or bed and then just roll a piece of plastic over it and weight it on each side and the ends. You can open the ends on days over freezing but below 50 degrees to allow it not to get too hot if it is sunny. If it is cloudy you can leave the ends closed unless it gets above 65 or so. If the days heat up over 50 and it is bright and sunny you may need to loosen one side and roll it over and put it back over at night or when the temps will once again be well below freezing. It is kind of like making a small greenhouse for your Brussels sprouts. If you like them as much as I do then it is worth the trouble, and it is a lot of trouble.[/QUOTE]

Tim you need to set them out in Sept. or Oct. and you will need to start the seed by at least early August. The seed need to be started indoors in the air conditioning because they don't germinate well in the heat. You also need to keep the plants indoors until it cools down some. I didn't get my seed started til Sept. 4 and it didn't cool off enough to set them out til early November and the squirrels ate my first planting. I set out again the 25 of November and it is looking like that may be too late this year the way it is warming up now.
If I was you I would start enough to do multiple plantings so you can find the best time for your area. Of course that seems to change every year.

[QUOTE=b54red;201868]Tim you need to set them out in Sept. or Oct. and you will need to start the seed by at least early August. The seed need to be started indoors in the air conditioning because they don't germinate well in the heat. You also need to keep the plants indoors until it cools down some. I didn't get my seed started til Sept. 4 and it didn't cool off enough to set them out til early November and the squirrels ate my first planting. I set out again the 25 of November and it is looking like that may be too late this year the way it is warming up now.
If I was you I would start enough to do multiple plantings so you can find the best time for your area. Of course that seems to change every year.[/QUOTE]

Bill, You gave me just the information I was looking for and
Now I will get me some seed. One of our local farm stores had
Some Plants but I was hesitant about buying any considering how
Warm it is.
My Wife and Daughter won't touch them with a ten foot pole but
I love vegetables and will try them all.
Thanks for the help.

Tim

Tim your wife and daughter might change their mind if they have some fresh from the garden. To me Brussels sprouts are one of those things that like tomatoes is so much better than store bought that I will no longer purchase them if I can't grow them. They might find the Bubbles variety more appetizing than some of the others as it seems to be milder and sweeter. I usually try to grow two varieties and now unless I find something better for our climate, Bubbles will always be one of the two.