Photo by Rick Gush
This year , I ’m determined to get Brussels sprouts 6 infantry tall !
So , I ’m hope some of the reader of this blog might give me some advice on grow Brussels sprouts . Does one have to strip the lower leaves off the stalks , and if so , at what leg ? Do commercial-grade growers garnish the crushed leaves off their Brussels sprouts plant life ? What are some of the locations and various planting and harvest home date for honorable home - garden sprouts ? Any counsel will be appreciated .
The reason I ’m asking for aid with growing Brussels sprout is because I ’m try , yet again , to uprise some really upright sprout this season . sprout are one of the veggie of which I have never grown peculiarly good specimen . This is really annoying , not because of my horticultural machismo being dented , but because I really like eat steam sprout with leaf mustard .
I used to visit the James Leonard Farmer markets in Half Moon Bay , Calif. , near San Francisco , Calif. , a bunch when I lived up there . I always love being able-bodied to buy whole stalks loaded with attached sprouts . I swear , some of the nub stalks were 3 inches in diam and almost 4 feet tall . The best Brussels sprout works I ever grew had a stalk that was only 1 1/2 column inch across and 2 groundwork tall . We thought the sprout we harvest last winter were tasty , but there were only modified measure of them . So , this year , we ’ve planted three dozen unlike Brussels sprout works in three different locations , all in the hopes that this might be the winter we grow some spectacular sprouts .
My basic architectural plan is that I intend to fertilize these Brussels germinate plants far backbreaking than common . In home gardening , it is surprising how often supernumerary fertilizer does the trick . So , I buried a large fistful of aged Gallus gallus manure 6 inches below each planting hole , and I ’m using manure tea once a week on the plants . My architectural plan is to take reward of the comparatively warm fall calendar month to farm the thickest and improbable stalks I can , and then trust the plants decide to make a bunch of the side shoot either during the coolheaded days of early winter or late wintertime . I have no idea if we ’ll get sprouts in 2011 , or whether we ’ll have to wait for early springiness in 2012 , but I think the bigger the stalks , the more — and tastier — sprout will be produced .
Once I am certain that I can , in fact , carry off to cultivate some fairly awesome Brussels sprouts , I ’d wish to make them a standard craw for our wintertime planting docket .
We havebroccoli , lettuce , wildarugula , common beet greens , comestible cod peas andfava beanson the schedule every year now , and it would be prissy to be able to add another important crop . What I ’m hoping to do one class is maturate some of the cherry Brussels sprouts I ’ve see in the seeded player catalogs . Hopefully , I ’ll already feel expert enough after this upcoming triumphant sprout season .
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