Here’s a little something for you snow SFG’ers.  Toward the end of this past years growing season I wanted to plant brussel sprouts.  I purposely waited until later because I’ve had so much trouble growing it in the spring and summer.  The problem in the past has been the white butterfly. So I thought to myself, why don’t I grow these later in the year when the white butterfly is gone?  It’s kind of the same strategy some people use with squash-they’ll plant squash a little later-after the threat of squash bugs has past.  I like that thinking but in shorter season climates such as we have, it might not give you enough time to grow your squash.  Right off the top of my head I don’t remember when I planted this but it  was sometime in late July I think.  I was hoping to get this growing and established for a winter crop and I was planning on protecting it through the winter.  Knowing that these little nuggets taste better after a frost, my goal was to get the plant big enough and established in time before the real hard winter weather got here.  I don’t think I made it.  But I didn’t want to just pull it up and throw it out.  So I’ve decided to keep it going and see what happens.  I’ll still cover it in bad weather.  I actually has grown some-though very slowly.  We’ve had 6-8 inches of snow this past week, with another 5-10 inches coming tonight.  I’ll cover it today to keep the weight of that snow off the plant.  I don’t know what this will look like going forward.  I’ve read that brussel sprouts can go into a dormant stage and then start growing in the spring.  If that’s the case this might work.  Maybe when everything starts to thaw and warm up this brussel sprout plant will begin to grow again in late winter.  If it gets big enough in early spring and starts growing the actual brussel sprouts, it could be great.  At that time we’ll still have enough weather that brings frost which will increase the taste of the brussel sprouts.  We’ll see how it all turns out.

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