Alright!
John Kohler with Growing Your Greens and growingyourgreens.com.
So today we have this really cool plant, jeez it must be maybe ten feet tall, so you can
see this is the old school raised beds here that we’re going to be redoing into the
new style which is right on the other side here fairly shortly, but this is the last
to get converted over.
And you can see a plant here, and it’s kind of leaning on this trellis in the front, and
there’s a big stalk right there it goes up and there’s some foliage here, and it
just keeps going up and up and up and up and up and up, and higher and jeez now it’s
really at the top.
And my friend came and said “What are those beans up there?”
So it’s like whoa yeah these look like little bean things, I mean especially if they’re
green.
When she came they were actually green, so these are still some of them are green, but
most of them are actually turning and getting dried, because it is summer time here.
So you can kind of see, I mean this is just nothing but beans up here, so what this is,
this is Brussels sprouts.
And these are Brussels sprouts that actually turned and went to flower and then now went
to seed.
And the seeds are contained actually in each of these little pods, and I never knew this
until I went to seed one time, so here’s a really good example, this pod here, if you
kind of see that it’s kind of hard to see here, but what you want to do is you want
to break this open, and if you break it open you see I broke it open, and there’s some
seeds inside there.
So the seeds are contained inside these little pod things, which are kind of like beans and
if you catch them when they’re just forming, they’re actually still soft enough to eat
and you can still eat them, I suppose you could eat them now but they’re very fibrous,
and they contain all the seeds, so this is a Brussels sprout plant, and you could kind
of see the baby Brussels sprouts growing out the stems here, and actually each one of these
points down here, you know right there, right there, I mean each one of these points was
a Brussels sprout.
And you know I don’t know, I wasn’t able to grow Brussels sprouts like you get them
at the store, because I didn’t have this big long [inaudible ] with all these sprouts
that were closed up, so I don’t know how you do that or how they do that, because what
happened to me was all these little spots that opened up, I would pick some up and eat
them, but then what would happen is they would open up.
And this is how it looks when they open up.
Just looks like this, they actually open up.
This is really peculiar I mean then all these ones open up and then basically turns into
like this, and then what happens is they go to flower and seed and they make the seeds
so they can reproduce, and I’ve never gotten the Brussels sprouts like at the store, but
that’s alright, because I got Brussels sprout leaves, so you know these leaves, once the
Brussels sprouts open up are like this, and these leaves are actually quite edible, and
they’re quite good.
Basically Brussels sprouts are Brassica family, so to me this tastes like a really strong
kale broccoli kind of leaf thing, really quite good and, look I’m blessed with all these
leaves, I mean this is all Brussels sprouts, I have only two plants here.
So many leaves, it’s pretty strong-tasting, tastes like Brussels sprouts you know so here’s
a Brussels sprout that I actually opened up, it’s almost like a cabbage thing and it
opened up, and here’s another part of the plant here with all kinds of basically the
seeds in the pods there, and I think we might be pulling out this plant fairly soon to redo
this bed or we might try to keep it.
But yeah you can see the little Brussels sprouts forming there once again.
So now you know we could harvest the seeds and then I could give these seeds to friends,
we could replant the seeds, and you can take the seeds and press out the oil if you wanted
to.
So many things you could do, but yeah this is Brussels sprouts that have actually gone
to flower and seed and all the Brussels sprout greens that are actually really good for eating.
Alright so this is John Kohler with Growing Your Greens.
And remember, you can grow your own greens.