Yields, harvest and marketing
Yields can be 1 to 3 kilograms per plant (15 to 40 tonnes per hectare) and a single plant may produce 50 to 80 sprouts which vary from 20 to 40g in weight.
Brussels sprouts are ready for harvest about 14 weeks after transplanting and can be picked for two to three months.
Plants are picked by hand three times per week from April to September in Perth districts and extending beyond September into early summer from the lower South West and South Coast.
Begin harvesting as the sprouts mature at the base of the plant.
Removing two to three leaves above the current level of harvest exposes sprouts for the next harvest and helps sprouts dry quickly after rain, minimising disease.
Some growers top the plants of late crops when the first sprouts are picked, to increase the size and time to maturity of the rest of the crop.
A good variety has sprouts that are easy to pick. Top quality sprouts are of good size throughout the season (30 to 45mm), round, tight with no internal browning and bright green. Discard loose, split, diseased and 'blown' sprouts then wash and grade, cool with forced-air or hydro-cooling and store at 0oC with humidity of 98%.
Sprouts are normally loose packed into 10kg cardboard cartons, or 22 to 30 litre plastic crates. Packing in five or 10kg polystyrene containers and covering with ice will keep the sprouts in good condition when sent to distant markets.
The stumps are large and fibrous and need to be well rotavated in order to break down prior to planting the next crop.
Acknowledgement
The original content of this page was authored by John Burt.