As Florence Pugh once said: “I love Brussels sprouts. There is so much hate on Brussels sprouts, but I love them.” You either belong to the 50% of the population that loves Brussels sprouts or you hate them. There are no in-betweens. So, in case these miniature cabbages have caught your attention with their nutty and sweet flavor when cooked, learn how to grow Brussels sprouts from seeds with me here!
Overview
Level of difficulty: Intermediate, you need more patience than skills
Nutrition: Brussels sprouts contain many vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other beneficial components for human health. You can find vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6, C, B9, K, calcium, iron, manganese, etc., in this superfood. Eating Brussels sprouts helps with cell generation to reduce the risk of cancer, high blood pressure, and heart complications, among other conditions to organs.
Height: Brussels sprouts grow quite tall, up to 3 feet, so it´s quite hard to grow this species indoors where the space is restricted. Theplantalsorequires support if it grows in a spot with lots of wind.
Time to vegetate: In general, the sprouts emerge after 90 to 110 days, depending on the variety, but it can take more for them to get large in size. Harvesting with my latest Brussels sprouts crop has taken me 150 days from seed.
Season to sow: Like most edible crops, Brussels sprouts are usually sown in spring from March to May, with prepared germination from late winter indoors. If sown directly into garden soil, gardeners usually choose late summer months to sow the seeds since the temperature has cooled off a bit. A mild climate is what the seeds and plants need to grow healthily.
Lifespan: Brussel sprouts are biennial, which means the plants will produce edible sprouts in the first year and flower in the second year before they die eventually. But, with that said, if gardeners don’t intend to cultivate seeds for future use, these plants usually are removed after being harvested.
Tips For Choosing Brussels Sprouts Cultivars
There are different varieties of Brussels sprouts with different components of nutrients. You can chooseone of these hybrids:
- Diablo: This variety loves the cold and will deliver a sweeter and less bitter flavor if undergoing a vernalization period. It also takes 110 days to mature.
- Catskill: This variety provides large buds and only takes 90 to 110 days to mature entirely, from seed to harvest.
- Long Island Improved: This hybrid secures a bountiful harvest of 50 to 100 buds of Brussels sprout each season. But, it takes longer to mature, around 100 to 150 days to mature from seed.
- Redarling: Tired of green Brussels? Try this hybrid if you want purple buds. The cultivar takes around 150 days to mature, but the result will be worth it.
Preparation
Tools
- Cell flats tray for seed germination
- Pruning shear
- Mulch (straw, newspaper, or compost)
- Soil: loam, compost, perlite, garden soil
- Distilled water
Containers
If grown in a pot, each Brussels plant needs a 10-inch wide and 15-inch deep pot. If grown in the garden bed, ensure the roots have room to wriggle with the same soil depth as the pots. How To
Grow Brussels Sprouts From Seeds Step-By-Step
Allow me to guide you through the process of growing delicious Brussels sprouts, from seeds to harvest, with the easiest instruction to follow.
Germination
Step 1: In late winter or early spring, prepare for Brussels sprout seeds’ germination. Fill the cell flats with the soil blend I recommend (with loam, garden soil, perlite, compost, and maybe lime or peat moss to amend acidic or alkaline soil) to make sure that the pH level is neutral (from 6.5 to 7) and the texture is well-drained.
Step 2: If the seeds are dry, soak them in water for 8 hours. If you are busy and can’t tend to the seeds that quickly, you may leave them underwater for maximum 12 hours.
Step 3: Create small holes no deeper than 1 ½ inches. Each cell flat equals 1 hole, and 1 hole equals 1 seed. Sow the seeds and cover them with dirt. Avoid burying, I must say.
Step 4: Water until the soil is damp but not too saturated. Repeat once every day to keep the moisture stable, but don’t overwater. After about 8 to 10 days, you can see the baby seedlings emerging from the ground. But don’t transplant yet. Allow the seeds to sit in the tray for another 2 to 3 weeks before repotting.
Seedling + Transplanting to containers or garden beds
You can start with the transplantation after 3 to 4 weeks from sowing the seeds.
Step 1: Prepare your garden bed or pots with the same soil blend.
Step 2: Dig deeper holes that are 2 to 3 inches deep to cover the entire root system of your Brussels plants.
Step 3: Remove the seedlings from the cell flats, don’t bother removing all the soil around the root system.
Step 4: Place the seedlings into their new home and cover the soil around their main stalks to support them.
Step 5: Water lightly so that the soil sticks to the root and keep it up 3 times per week to ensure that the crop receives at least 1 inch of water weekly.
Step 6: After 10 to 14 days, you can start applying fertilizer with a somewhat balanced NPK ratio.
Adult plant
After 90 to 110 days from seed, the Brussels sprouts mature entirely. The plants should be around 2 to 3 feet. Stop fertilizing 3 weeks before harvesting the buds! Throughout their growing process, ensure your plants receive direct sunlight and a stable watering schedule.
Hand-pollinating indoor trees/ Outdoor pollination
Pollinating this species isn’t necessary unless you want to collect seeds for the next Brussels season. If that’s the case, you should get involved with hand pollination since the species is self-unfruitful. It requires pollen from other Cole crops like broccoli, cabbage, or cauliflower. If your garden is a frequent hangout spot for bees or butterflies, they can help with cross-pollination.
Harvest
Harvesting Brussels sprouts is easy:
Step 1: Use a large knife to chop off the entire plants or loosen the dirt around the stalks to remove them in one go.
Step 2: Cut off all the leaves, don’t leave behind anything but the buds and the large principal stalk.
Step 3: Use a pair of scissors or secateurs the cut off the sprouts as close to the stalk as possible to avoid damaging them. Use can also use your good old hands to remove them but that may hurt the buds and your skin.
Step 4: Store the buds in a fridge if possible to prolong their lifespan to up to 2 weeks. If left outside, the buds won’t last longer than 4 days. If you intend to minimize the bitter taste of the vegetable, cut the buds in halves before cooking and add a splash of sour ingredients to the batch.
How To Care For Brussels Sprouts
Learn about the living conditions that Brussels sprouts favor here!
Light
Brussels sprouts need at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight per day, much like most greens we can work with. But the best condition we can provide these greens is full sun, which means they can sit outside all day and experience bright sunlight, and cool off in the shade at night. In fact, this species belongs to the shade-tolerant group, but it’s not advisable to keep it in the shade for too long as it slows down sprouts spawning.
Can Brussels sprouts get too much sun? It may. Despite its daily necessity for a light-rich diet, the plan faces the risk of not being able to develop sprouts for consumption. So for areas with longer days and hotter climates, providing a balanced sun-shade frequency is necessary.
Of course, sun or light is necessary throughout the life of Brussels sprout plants, from germination to harvest, for healthy growth. During the germination period, if you can’t move the cell flats in and out of the house all the time, one or two gardening solar lamps will provide an adequate wavelength for photosynthesis and photoperiodism.
Temperature
Brussel sprouts thrive in cool climates with temperatures between 45 and 70oF. It can survive slightly lower heat, around 20oF, before the frost gets to the plants and eventually kills them.
What this species truly hate is high heat. If you want to grow your own Brussels crops and eat the sprout, sowing the seeds during the first summer months when the sun is blasting, and the heat is cooking runners and pedestrians who grace the street is a bad idea. Under intense heat, Brussels don’t produce sprouts even when they continue growing the foliage healthily.
Therefore, I suggest sowing the seeds in the most fortunate time: during spring, preferably early spring or late summer, to secure an impressive yield. You may get 50 sprouts from each plant!
Water
During the germination period, I advise a daily watering schedule but in a small amount each time. But when the seedlings grow taller than 3 inches, and you transplant them to your garden beds or pots, you can thin out the watering frequency to 3 times a week. Just make sure that the soil is evenly moist to the touch and that the plants receive 1 to 2 inches of water per week.
Soil
Another important aspect when growing Brussels sprouts is providing them a well-drained, loamy, and rich soil. Add compost to the soil and some perlite to more the texture even more porous and well-aviated. The perlite pieces act as air pockets and provide a storage capacity for oxygen to access the root systems.
In case your garden soil has always been a great place for weeds to invade or you want to keep the soil temperature chill, mulching it during hot days is a valid option. I suggest compost, straw, and newspaper as mulch materials.
Diseases
The most common diseases that I find in my Brussels sprout crop is the same as those of other vegetables I have taken care of: black rot, leaf spot, powdery mildew, damping off, etc. All these complications can be avoided by spraying fungicide once every 2 weeks, starting 10 days after transplantation, and moderate irrigation with minimum drip over the plants.
Fertilizer
Fertilizing this species is no big deal, and you can simply choose balanced fertilizers with an NPK ratio of 5-5-5 or 10-10-10. But if possible, purchase bags with slightly higher potassium and phosphorous ratios than nitrogen (5-10-5 or 5-10-10).
This will promote root and flower growth and nutrient transportation over the entire plant. The components will benefit the growth of the sprouts from the main stalks instead of provoking a leafy development.
When should you start fertilizing? Besides the compost that we already add to the soil blend for transplantation, it’s advisable to start using fertilizer 10 to 14 days after repotting. And the procedure must repeat once every 2 – 4 weeks, depending on the recommendation of the fertilizer of choice. Stop when the sprouts enter the bulging stage.
Furthermore, I also suggest using water-soluble or liquid fertilizers as it’s easier to distribute them evenly around the plants’ 1-2 inches radius. These types of fertilizer also sink quickly into the soil. They aren’t too ingressive and don’t occult the risk of burning the plant’s roots as much as the granular type.
How to prune your Brussels sprout plants
The best time to prune these plants is 3 weeks before harvesting the sprout. At this point, the sprouts haven’t developed fully in size yet, so pruning the top and bottom leaves, but not all of them, will send signals to the plants and make them focus the nutrients and energy on growing the buds.
Simply use a pruning shear and cut off the lower leaves that have gone yellow and half of the top leaves that keep emerging. We need to cut the nutrient flow to the top foliage section, but we must leave some because the edible buds still benefit from photosynthesis, an activity majorly carried out by the leaves.