To answer your question, the abundance is really three-fold. 1) Choosing varieties that mature in our short season, 2) Regular fertilizer applications and 3) Topping the plant a month to first frost. When we top them, we just cut off the growing tip, maybe an inch or two. As soon as we do this, the brussies start flourishing and bulk up to full size within 4-6 weeks.

Thanks for sharing your experiences! It has taken us a lot of years to get pretty good at extreme northern growing. We are proud of our efforts and try to help others, no matter where they live!

Brussels are incredibly cold tolerant. Were we not so bitterly cold up north here, winter growing is actually quite common with them. Glad you’re getting some success, sandy soils are rough! People that complain about growing in loam or silt soils have obviously never approached sand and clay soils! Organics are the key. Thanks for sharing your experience with us!

Excellent, glad you found us. The tip regarding topping your brussies about a month prior to last frost is probably our best one. This alone will help your sprouts bush out. Good luck and let us know if you have any further questions!

That’s a really good question! We haven’t experimented with this much, this post is all about growing them in a single season and should work well in cold climates like Ottawa! (We are zone 2!) However, many Brussels Sprout varieties are 200+ day crops, meaning there would be a lot of room for growing some varieties into the winter and then “finishing” them outdoors over the following summer. This would mimic some warmer climates where they are sowed in late summer and are expected to produce the following spring. You could probably explore some interesting genetics this way in colder climates. Unlike peppers which are perennial in warmer climates (and with overwintering in colder ones), Brussels are only biennial at best and couldn’t be expected to perpetually produce. You also wouldn’t treat them similarly, where you cut back peppers and they’ll regrow the following year – sprouts aren’t like this at all. They grow a single stalk, with the sprouts producing along that stalk at the leaf’s internodes. Hope that helps!