The Great Brussels Sprout Experiment
Back in August when we planted the Brussels sprout seeds, we knew it was an experiment that would probably fail. According to the seed packet, the variety we planted ("Long Island Improved") matures in 110 days. When you add in the 7-14 days for the seeds to germinate, that would bring our estimated harvest date to somewhere between November 18 and December 2. That's a pretty late harvest date, but we figured we'd give it a try anyway, especially since they are supposed to taste much better when harvested after a frost or two. Those November dates would certainly take care of that, and we thought it'd be nice to have some for Thanksgiving if it worked out.
These plants came up quickly but got a bit of a slow start courtesy of the cabbage loopers that were munching on the leaves back in the summer. Once that was taken care of, though, the plants seemed to do well.
Maybe too well, because I pretty much ignored them in favor of all that bok choy and lettuce, and then later all the peas and beans that were ready to go. The Brussels sprouts weren't very exciting in the midst of all that harvesting. So I kind of forgot to fertilize them.
And that's probably a big mistake, since these plants (like cabbages and broccoli) are heavy feeders. By the time I remembered to do it, it was the middle of October, which is basically skipping a feeding in September.
The only reason I remembered to do any fertilizing at all is because I was thumbing through a copy of The Backyard Homestead and stopped to read the Brussels sprouts section. In addition to reminding me to fertilize, it also suggested to remove the leaves once sprouts begin to form. This will force the plant to put all its energy into growing the sprouts instead of the leaves.
Yeah, I didn't do that either. You may recall that I had my hands full with planting bulbs around that time, and then the weather was kind of iffy, and I was generally a really slack farmer.
Well, today I finally got out there and broke off all those (now enormous) leaves. Just about every plant had teeny tiny sprouts at the place where each leaf grew out of the central stalk, so I removed lots and lots of leaves. By trial and error (the biggest such error resulting in the accidental decapitation of one of the plants), I found that a quick hard pull downward (if you're holding the leaf about a thumbs-width from the stalk) breaks it off cleanly. The result of this work:
So now I have a bed of pretty naked-looking stalks and a giant mound of leaves in the compost pile. There may or may not be enough time for these small sprouts to mature. Here's what I mean by tiny:
You might want to click on that to see the itty-bitty sprouts there. Anyway, it's looking to be a warm (for Massachusetts in November) week, which should help. I suppose if they look to be plumping up, we could put up another greenhouse hoop over them for the coldest nights to try to usher that along.
I wish I had a before photo of these plants, but the fact that I don't says a lot about how little attention I've paid to them up to today. That's not a very good experiment, but I am hoping that my renewed attention can pay off. If not? Well, lesson learned about getting these off to a better (and earlier) start next year.
These plants came up quickly but got a bit of a slow start courtesy of the cabbage loopers that were munching on the leaves back in the summer. Once that was taken care of, though, the plants seemed to do well.
Maybe too well, because I pretty much ignored them in favor of all that bok choy and lettuce, and then later all the peas and beans that were ready to go. The Brussels sprouts weren't very exciting in the midst of all that harvesting. So I kind of forgot to fertilize them.
And that's probably a big mistake, since these plants (like cabbages and broccoli) are heavy feeders. By the time I remembered to do it, it was the middle of October, which is basically skipping a feeding in September.
The only reason I remembered to do any fertilizing at all is because I was thumbing through a copy of The Backyard Homestead and stopped to read the Brussels sprouts section. In addition to reminding me to fertilize, it also suggested to remove the leaves once sprouts begin to form. This will force the plant to put all its energy into growing the sprouts instead of the leaves.
Yeah, I didn't do that either. You may recall that I had my hands full with planting bulbs around that time, and then the weather was kind of iffy, and I was generally a really slack farmer.
Well, today I finally got out there and broke off all those (now enormous) leaves. Just about every plant had teeny tiny sprouts at the place where each leaf grew out of the central stalk, so I removed lots and lots of leaves. By trial and error (the biggest such error resulting in the accidental decapitation of one of the plants), I found that a quick hard pull downward (if you're holding the leaf about a thumbs-width from the stalk) breaks it off cleanly. The result of this work:
So now I have a bed of pretty naked-looking stalks and a giant mound of leaves in the compost pile. There may or may not be enough time for these small sprouts to mature. Here's what I mean by tiny:
You might want to click on that to see the itty-bitty sprouts there. Anyway, it's looking to be a warm (for Massachusetts in November) week, which should help. I suppose if they look to be plumping up, we could put up another greenhouse hoop over them for the coldest nights to try to usher that along.
I wish I had a before photo of these plants, but the fact that I don't says a lot about how little attention I've paid to them up to today. That's not a very good experiment, but I am hoping that my renewed attention can pay off. If not? Well, lesson learned about getting these off to a better (and earlier) start next year.
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