- In this mess of leaves in this bed you see before you
is a crop that I used to absolutely hate eating
when I was a kid, Brussels sprouts.
Yes, that is correct,
I used to spend two hours sitting at the dining room table
refusing to eat these steamed
and really quite frankly burnt Brussels sprouts as a kid.
But as I've grown up, I think Brussels sprouts
have undergone a renaissance,
both in the kitchen and in the garden.
So in this video, I'm gonna give you
some of our most practical tips
on how to grow the best Brussels sprouts
you've ever seen.
I've got my little machete here.
I'm gonna give this a quick chop.
(machete chops)
That's a thick stalk.
Look at these Brussels.
Let's learn how to grow 'em.
The thing you absolutely
have to know about Brussels sprouts,
and really this goes for any brassica,
'cause Brussels sprouts is Brassica oleracea,
which is the same exact species as cabbage,
as kale, as collard greens,
as kohlrabi, all of those crops,
Brussels sprouts especially,
it's time of year to plant.
You have to plant
at the correct time of the year.
So in warmer zones, zones that don't have
a really hardcore frost or freeze,
in my opinion the correct time to plant brassicas,
the only one that worked for me with these Brussels
to have some seriously fatty B sprout stalks,
is to plant it in the fall.
I started these seeds I believe in late September,
and then I planted them out in the garden here in November,
grew them through our winter.
We actually had a little bit of frost
so we put a cover on top,
and then we're harvesting here at the end of March.
Now that's just my warmer zones, right?
So maybe 8B plus.
If you're in colder zones than that,
I recommend starting them in late winter indoors,
maybe mid to late winter indoors,
transplanting them out in early spring
and getting them in the ground as soon as you can,
because with Brussels and all those brassicas,
you have to avoid the temps getting too hot
for a couple reasons.
If the temps are too hot,
simply development of the plant will not occur correctly,
but secondly, all of the pests and diseases
that will decimate these crops
come in warmer temperatures.
I'm talking aphids,
I'm talking cabbage moths, cabbage worms,
any of that stuff is coming in a warmer temperature.
If you dodge it by growing it
in the colder part of the season,
which these plants love anyways,
you're in a much better position.
If you're unfamiliar with how Brussels sprouts grow,
take a look at this stalk.
This should tell you just about everything you need to know.
So all of these stems that have been chopped
are those leaves that you see
on the mature plants.
Now, what the Brussels sprouts are
are basically clumps of leaves
that are forming in between these other main leaf nodes,
and that's what you're growing and eating
as your Brussels sprout.
So what you see, this is the bottom of the plant here,
is that the Brussels sprouts mature from bottom to top.
These are some huge, fat Brussels.
I'll break this one off for you
just so you get a sense for it.
Big one right here.
And as you go up the plant,
they get smaller and a little bit less mature.
So one harvest tip I have for you
is to harvest from the bottom first
and let the rest mature as you go up.
That is one way to get a little more
bang for your Brussels dollar,
harvesting from bottom to top,
but another thing you can do as the plant
gets to a more mature state,
much like you see this one here,
you can see how these fan leaves
start to kind of clump in and cluster in a bit.
It's a sign that it's reached about as tall
as at least this one's going to get.
It's not putting out a ton more leaves
and it's trying to focus that energy into those Brussels,
so what you can do is come in and top the plant off.
So I've now removed the growing tip, right?
So it does not have the ability now
to put out more vegetative growth up this way.
So what's it going to do?
It's gonna size up those Brussels.
There's still a lot of plant material on here,
a lot of leaves to photosynthesize,
but it's not putting any more energy
into growing vertically anymore.
So all these small Brussels at the top
should start to size up a little bit more.
Do this closer towards the end of the season.
Another thing you can do
if it comes to pruning is coming down
and taking off some of these lower families at the bottom.
They're covered by most of the ones in the middle anyways,
so they're not getting access
to that much light in the first place,
and they open up the bottom
to a little more light and a little more airflow.
Let's talk a little bit now about the growing conditions
to allow you to have some really healthy Brussels sprouts.
Like any of these brassicas,
you are growing it for its leaves.
It might not look like it,
it's that little Brussels sprout ball,
but it just is a cluster of small leaves,
almost like a miniature cabbage.
And so what they need at the beginning of their life
is a well-amended soil.
You can see I'm growing these in in-ground beds.
This is our native top soil mixed in
with a little bit of compost that was purchased in bulk.
We don't have enough compost here on the property
that we're generating to amend all of our beds ourselves,
so we do purchase some in, and this is just basically
a couple inches of compost mixed in.
Now, we also did what's called a furnigation.
You can do it a lot of different ways.
You can sprinkle organic granular fertilizer
or water it in with watering can.
All that being said, nitrogen early in its life
is probably the only fertilizer I would really consider
for Brussels sprouts and some of these other brassica crops.
You can sprinkle some granular organic.
You can use feather meal, bone meal, both high in nitrogen,
or just throw some compost in
and hope that there's enough nitrogen in there.
It's leafy growth you're going for.
Nitrogen is the macronutrient
that promotes the most leafy growth.
In fact, it's the one that plants use the most
out of all of the ones that they use.
So that is it for fertilizing.
For watering, just keep the soil moist.
You don't need to do anything crazy.
Water it much like you'd water
any other leafy green-esque type of crop.
And then sun, sun should be maximized
so long as temperature is minimized or controlled.
You don't wanna put it in full sun
growing into the hot part of the season.
You can have it in full sun
if you're growing it through that cold period
like we do here in these warmer zones,
or if you're in a colder zone, you can have it in full sun
so long as you've planted it in late winter, early spring
and it's coming to maturity in mid to late spring
and you don't get a hot season.
Let's talk now about some of the problems you might run into
when you're growing these incredible plants.
I won't lie, I've had just about every problem.
Now, I won't belabor the point.
We already talked about planting time.
That will alleviate many of your problems,
but the pests that are most likely to attack this plant
is of course the aptly named cabbage moth or cabbage worm,
which is a white moth or butterfly, I forgot which,
but either way, it's got a white wing
and then a black dot in the top right corner.
If you see that, you know that on the underside
of all these leaves,
there's gonna be a tiny, yellow little egg
that will hatch and turn into these tiny green larva
that will then get much larger,
and they will eat a lot of your plant.
In fact, you'll see on this leaf right here
there are tons of holes, and if I look at the bottom,
in this case, it's aphids,
which is the number two pest, but you usually will see
a little green worm or a large green worm on that.
Now the only way absolutely foolproof to prevent them
is to put some kind of physical barrier
that the holes of that barrier are smaller than the moth
so the moth cannot lay eggs on this,
a floating row cover, netting of some kind.
That's the only foolproof way.
If you do see an early sign, you can do some hand picking.
If you really feel like doing some sort of spray,
you can use BTE, which is an organic spray.
It sort of tricks the caterpillars
into thinking they're not hungry and they starve to death,
but it does affect the larval forms
of some beneficial insects,
which is why I typically try to avoid it.
Now, the second thing you're gonna run into are aphids,
and that's the thing
that's on all of these plants right here.
So the way I deal with aphids almost always
is grabbing the flat hose setting
(hose sprays)
and just blasting them off.
That's my foolproof way.
If you do it often enough,
they will be cut down in population.
And then of course,
we've talked recently about aphids here on the channel.
Those are the two main problems you're going to run into,
pests much more so than disease.
When it comes time to harvest your Brussels
and actually bring them into the kitchen,
you can do it any way you want really.
I prefer this machete method,
which I'm still working on, to be honest with you.
(machete chops)
There we go.
So what you can do if you want to
is you can actually cook this entire thing
directly on the stalk by just stripping away
the actual vegetative leaves like this,
and you're left with this nice stalk,
which of course you can wash off.
You can actually just roast this directly if you want to,
but the secret, the way to actually enjoy Brussels sprouts
is not to steam them.
It is to cut them in half.
So take a Brussel, cut it in half, olive oil, salt, pepper,
whatever seasonings you want, whatever toppings you want,
oven, 450 degrees.
Never steam these things.
It is the 1990s fail-way of cooking them,
as I learned as a child.
You need to dice 'em up and cook 'em in the oven.
Treat 'em with the respect
that you gave 'em when you grew 'em.
So hopefully these tips help you grow Brussels.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
(upbeat music)