Re: Brussels Sprouts

**Janet Wintermute jwintermute@erols.com>**

At 09:10 AM 8/6/01 -0400, Katherine Wendt said,

>Hey, I wrote that question [about Brussels sprouts] to him [Scott Aker of 
>the Wash. Post]!

Wow!  The world is definitely shrinking.

I met Scott at a Garden Writers Assn. of America meeting that included a 
tour of the Burpee farms at Fordhook, PA.  We rode around on the tour bus 
together for a while.  He's a very pleasant guy, not at all stuck on 
himself (for a Postie).  He works full time for USDA's Agricultural 
Research Service, and I work for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection 
Service, so we had civil service issues and the Department to yak about in 
addition to garden-related subjects.  Aker is very well informed.

>I put in transplants a couple of weeks ago, but I think I'm going to pop 
>in a couple of seeds now and compare harvests.

That's useful.  I've often wanted to do it with tomatoes, and actually the 
birds did it for me a couple years ago.  I was merrily transplanting, 
fertilizing, and grooming my toms in the raised beds beside my house when, 
long about July 25 or so, I noticed that I had two tomato volunteers, 
exactly positioned at the left and right of my front steps, growing like 
big dogs and dotted with ripening fruit.  Only the birds could have left 
this little billet-doux.  The symmetry of it was particularly appealing.

Those volunteers were at exactly the same stage of development as my 
pampered transplants.

>What makes me nervous is what Jim Allen said about having to soak them to 
>get the worms out.

I've always had a few green worms on my broccoli but never had them wait to 
come out of hiding until the cooking water got hot.  In addition, I find it 
hard to imagine their being able to survive once the broccoli was 
"steamed," as you say your DH did his bad batch.  Anybody else report this 
"tons of worms" problem plus delayed flight pattern?

If you haven't grown broccoli yourself, let me assure you that these worms 
are little (about the diameter of a pencil lead) and chartreuse green 
without markings and only about a half-inch long or so.  They're not slimy 
or revolting--it's just that the idea of worms being disgusting is so 
firmly implanted in our brains that we feel yucky about their being in or 
on a food item.

Perhaps they won't be as much of an issue for fall-planted Brussels 
sprouts.  Certainly the tight bulb structure of Bsprouts would give the 
worms a much harder time than they have with broccoli in terms of trying to 
hide....

--Janet

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