Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi Mandylew,
I picked some Sprouts earlier today and then got invited out to dinner so didn't use them. They measure 1.75" long and almost 1.5" wide and these are Bedford Darkmar 21. Those at the bottom of the plant were smaller but now right up the plant they are about the same. I will admit that this year they have really grown well and I feel these are quite a bit larger than in previous years from the same seed packet, which incidently, was bought in 2002.
JB.

sounds lovely I shall try some of those them, Andrew tokely raves about 'brilliant' are they any good?

Mandy

Hi Mandylew,
I have never grown 'F1 Brilliant' so am not really in a position to make comment. What I will say is that apart from F1 Montgomery all my other sprouts are open pollinated varieties which may not be as regular in size and are not as robust as young plants but they taste oh so much better.
There are still quite a lot of OP Sprout Varieties available and I suspect there may be a few in the Heritage Collections. Do give them a whirl as I am sure you will be surprised at the results.
JB.
PS If they are a total failure thats a real suprise!!

Hi Mandylew, Johnboy et al. My own sprouts have been a bit disappointing. Although I had staked them, I obviously hadn't done so well enough, as they have been blown about a bit by the strong S-W wind. However, we've enjoyed the Falstaff variety, which I grew for the first time this year, and we have some plants from my last seeds of Bedford Fillbasket, by now 3 years old.

Some of the Falstaff sprouts have been almost as big as JB's, but most of these and the others have started to blow while still small. I'll get more over the winter, but they won't be too great or all that many.

I wonder whether growing them in a raised bed may have contributed to the comparatively poor crop. Firstly the idea of raised beds is to grow things closer together and so I spaced them only 2ft apart if that. Secondly, the bed will have been cultivated before planting, but sprouts and other brassicas don't like that, I'm told.

The third thing is depth. My intention was to plant them quite deeply, but somehow I didn't get them in as deep as I had wished. That's because when I made the hole it looked well and truly deep, but the depth was all recently dug soil. If I had put them in any deeper, I wouldn't have been able to get the anti-root fly collar round the stems.

Next year I won't dig the bed. I'll grow Falstaff and Darkmar and get them right into the soil. I don't suppose it does them any harm to have half the stem buried, does it?

Happy new Year everyone

mike

My sprouts 'Brilliant' and 'Oliver F1' were both planted in a raised bed. Set as deeply as possible up to their seed leaves. I do bring the plants on in 6" pots before planting so they are a good size before going out. I don't use collars. 5 plants by 5 rows across a 6ft bed.Caged in netting which I think helps to stop them blowing over.
I'm still picking Oliver and very few are showing any signs of blowing yet. Superb crop this year.

Beryl.

Hi Mike,
I grow Sprouts in 6'x 33' designated beds but not that raised. The edges of the bed are defined in 4" x 1" Tanalized timber.
My ground is always cultivated and I plant out at 2' centres. I do firm them in with my heel and I have them staked. The whole bed is then covered with anti White Fly netting made up in sections. This excludes just about every Brassica pest. I think the netting act as a good windbreak and although live in an area of high winds I do not suffer from wind problems. (it's only when I eat the sprouts that the wind problems occur!)
I have had some superb Sprouts over the Christmas period and there are masses still to come.
You mention Bedford Fillabasket which is to me a real blast of the past. I grew them just after the war so that's how long. As I remember they were a superb OP
variety of really good flavour. I feel that as we grow to please ourselves a little irregularity in size is of no consequence just so long as the flavour is there.
I heard a Sprout farmer explaining how they had bred sweetness into the sprout to suit modern tastes so perhaps that is why I, in this instance, are not that fond of the new F1 varieties.
May I take this opportunity to wish you a very fruitful growing season.
JB.

We grew sprouts Topline (DT Brown) this year and they are doing fine. We started picking about mid-November and they are still going strong. Strangely, though, quite a few of the sprout tops (which I usually harvest at the end) are rotting!

Now we are looking forward to the spring greens and purple sprouting broccoli which are growing well, in fact, I gave them some Growmore this morning to give them a boost after all the rain we have had.