Home Vegetable Gardening: Growing Brussel Sprouts

Brussel sprouts are a great vegetable to add to anyone's garden. They do well in a variety of temperate climates, so regions where cold weather sets in, brussel sprouts will do just fine.

They are a great source of many minerals and vitamins that the human body required, meaning that adding them to your diet can satisfy many nutritional needs.

Here in this tutorial I give you some simple steps you can follow to increase the harvest of these wonderfully nutritious vegetables right in your own backyard.

Start by preparing your site. If you are going to grow them in pots on your porch or balcony make sure have a pot at least twelve inches deep with a diameter of ten inches filled with garden soil available from any home or garden center. For the traditional backyard garden, make sure you mix in plenty of compost or manure in the fall so the soil is ready in the spring. Get yourself a pH soil tester. Brussel sprouts require soil to be less acidic so keep the soil pH level under 7.

When the spring rolls around it is time to put the seeds in the ground. Brussel sprouts (depending on the specific species) can take up to 100 days to reach maturity, so start by growing them indoors and then transplant them when they are four to six weeks old. Whether you start them indoors and transplant them or directly seed them into the garden space them out every sixteen to eighteen inches.

Brussel sprouts can grow in both warm temperatures but do better in cooler climates. So don't be discouraged if you live in a warmer part of the world if your brussel sprouts don't yield the same amount as your cooler climate growers. Just keep the soil evenly moist and a top layer of well decomposed compost to give your brussel sprouts a fresh supply of nutrients throughout the growing season.

Harvest them whenever the buds are firm, usually a half inch to one inch in size. Many species of brussel sprouts will survive a few frosts, so keep harvesting until the plant no longer produces anymore, which could go into very cooler temperatures.

If you have never thought of growing them in your own home vegetable garden you can see by the tips above just how easy it is to do so. Add some beneficial nutrients to your diet through growing brussel sprouts right in your own backyard.

By:
M.C. Podlesny

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A guide to vegetable gardening for the rest of us, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where ever gardening books are sold. He can be reached at his website: AveragePersonGardening.com where you can sign up for his free newsletter and he will send you a pack of vegetable seeds to get your home vegetable garden started.