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Rocky Mountain Gardening

Brussels Sprouts -- too close together?

14 years ago

The other day I planted out four wee brussels sprout plants (Jade E Cross) that came home with me from the local nursery:

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I know it's rather early, but since they're on a raised bed and under covered hoops at night, I figured they'd be warm enough -- although the 80 degree temps the other day caused a bit of a scramble to keep them cool!

Question I have is: did I put them in too close together? They're currently about 12 inches apart from one another, a la' the square foot gardening method and Barbara Hyde's "Gardening in the Mountain West" series, but now I'm wondering if this will be OK, as many other sources recommend 18-24 inches.

Any thoughts would be more than welcome. :)

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Comments (3)

nancy_in_co
14 years ago
Hi Laura,

I was waiting for one of the more experienced veggie gardeners to answer your question but I can take a crack at it. I grow brussel sprouts every year - I don't much care for the big bitter ones in the grocery store but the home grown ones are sweet, tender and wonderful.

I think you have them too close together. I plant mine about 18" apart. They will defintely get big and broad.

Oh, and if this is your first venture into brussel sprouts, I find that if you wait to harvest until after the first real cold or snow in the fall, they will be sweeter. Definitely don't worry about a little frost - these babies are hearty!

Good luck, Nancy
singcharlene
14 years ago
I would say that farther apart would be better. I grew them for the first time last year and I think they were too close. The plants do get pretty big.

That's interesting about waiting until the first snow. I never got any brussels sprouts off of mine last fall. The plants grew very big but they never grew any bigger than marble size. I don't know what I did wrong? I'm thinking maybe my soaker house in that area of the garden wasn't working well. I'm replacing it this year and I'm going to try and grow them again. I've already winter sowed them and have some tiny seedlings.

I love them so much and can only imagine how tasty they are from the garden.

Good luck!
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Up here in the frozen north, you need to get them in the ground by first of June at the latest, or they won't have time to grow to the size they really need to be to make a proper crop. Because of their growth pattern, there isn't any danger in planting them too early, unlike, say, cauliflower which can "button" if it is too cold while the seedling is small. But you can plant them too late. I guess if you planted well-established transplants by July 1st and REALLY babied them, they would still be big enough to give a good yield, but personally I don't want to chance that. The advice about planting in summer to fall is for the warm winter folks, Zones 7-10 basically.
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Interesting setup. I do think you were a bit late and that your best bet is to carry on, covering the plants with row cover to get them through winter. Because the light supply is running short, growth will slow down a lot, and then the plants will start making progress again in Feb. Last winter a friend left some plants in his leaky unheated greenhouse and left town. They grew 4 feet tall and bore heavily in early spring.
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As far as I understand it you only cut the terminal bud to promote even maturity of all the sprouts on the stalk. This is usually done for full stalk harvesting. For a longer harvest period like most gardeners want, you can just harvest the sprouts gradually from the bottom up and you'll get more producing all winter from the top bud. I sell quite a lot of loose sprouts at thanksgiving time so I cut the tops of 3/4 of the plants to get lots of them sized up right around the holidays. The plants left with tops keep producing salable sprouts the rest of the winter. As far as the issue of the sprouts without leaves not getting as large as the others, thats easy. The leaf feeds the sprout and if you remove the leaf the sprout suffers. I only remove leaves at harvest time when they start to yellow from the bottom up as the sprouts mature. Hope this helps, Mark
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I read that they need to be fertilized 4-5 weeks after they are planted with ammonium nitrate.
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laura_42
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks so much, Nancy and Charlene. :)

I only grew one plant last year, and the sprouts were tasty before the snow -- and even better afterwards. I also found that if I harvested them early enough, new sprouts grew in their place!

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Since I've got limited space, I'm either going to move them slightly apart (to about 14-15 inches) or else take out a couple of the plants altogether and try them in containers. Will see how it goes...

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