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Wednesday 23 March 2011

Sprout Tops


I spent some time yesterday clearing out some 'old' plants to make way for some new ones. I had a bed of brussel sprouts that I had eaten all the sprouts from but left the plants in the bed.
                                   

I was then able to use all the leaves from the sprouts tops in a similar way to cabbage. I've now cut it all up & frozen it in bags. Each bag has four portions in it, so will do us for a meal. I managed to fill 20 bags up yesterday, so that should keep us going for a while. Last night we had some cooked with leeks at tea-time. It's also good stir fried with some garlic.

Here's what it looked like on the chopping board -


It's good to use up parts of a vegetable that might otherwise be thrown away! I also composted the stalks of the sprouts, so it's all been put to good use.

All I need to do now is get on with planting the potatoes in the bed I took the sprouts from!

13 comments:

  1. interesting - what do they taste like? are they kinda bitter?

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  2. No - they are not at all bitter. They are like cabbage, but probably less strong.

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  3. Didn't know you could eat the leaves too!

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  4. What a beautiful garden you must have, I just love your blog! Great idea here and with the leek sounds delicious!

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  5. Nice ..I have never had the leaves of Brussel sprouts...they look similar to kale.
    I love greens!

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  6. Yes, they are v similar to kale. Having some more tonight with our Sunday Dinner.

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  7. How cool to make good use of all the parts of the brussel sprouts. I haven't tried growing them for awhile, because after one OK crop, any others I've tried were eaten by cabbage worms. Do you use row covers? I should try that. I do grow kale, and seem to have enough for us and the critters.

    So, tell me about tea time. I was thinking it was more of a snack than a meal. What time do you have it, and then what about supper?

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  8. that's a great tip! I shall remember that. I like the fact that anyhing not used goes on the compost too, it means that if it doesn't feed me it's goodness will "feed" the soil eventually! ;)

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  9. Was so pleased to read this on your blog! We found a perfectly fine Brussels sprouts stalk under the snow when we shoveled it away from the garden, as well as a small cabbage and they were just fine. Discarded in autumn, rejoiced over in spring))).

    Thank you also for visiting my blog and for your excellent advice.

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  10. Thanks for a good read i like so much i read nearly every day i will rember to use my leaves of sprouts later this year just planted some seeds and dug over one of my new raised beds happy gardeing from Linda

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  11. I just planted some new sprouts a couple of weeks ago too. Although my sprouts weren't great last year, with the amount of leaves I could use, they were worth doing. I am trying some different ones this time, so who knows? Thanks for reading the blog!

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  12. Corner Gardener Sue - thanks for your comments. I don't use anything to cover the rows and didn't have many probs. At one point there were some caterpillars on, but I checked daily and took any off as eggs, by just wiping the leaves.

    As for tea time, for me that's our evening meal (called dinner by some).

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  13. farawayme - thanks. I like to compost, it gives you a good feeling (and saves some money too!)

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