Brussels Sprouts (Thanksgiving 2025)

June was with me in the spring when we planted the garden.  She had just turned four.  I explained what each plant was. 

“These two are Brussels sprouts.”

“What’s that?”

“Your Mom and Dad buy them in the store.  Like little cabbages.  We roast them in the oven.”

“Papa, they’re little.”

They did look a little puny.  A one-inch stem and two pale green leaves.

“They’ll look a lot better when we get them in the ground.  With some sun and rain they’ll be fine.  We’ll eat them on Thanksgiving.”

We planted them in the end corners of our small, raised bed garden.  Peppers and tomatoes.  Garlic planted the previous Halloween.  The Brussels sprouts.

Her Mom and Dad gardened at her house in the city too.  Cucumber vines.  Tomatoes in pots.  Every time we were together, we checked out the progress of the vegetables.  Like June, the plants grew fast.

It was a very hot summer.  The peppers and tomatoes looked healthy.  The Brussels sprouts grew taller but didn’t look good for a long time.  In July the bugs started eating the leaves.

“Papa, the Buster spouts have big holes in them!”

“I know June.  Those are Brussels sprouts.  But they have a long way to go.  We don’t eat them till Thanksgiving.  They like cold weather.”

Truth was, I was worried about those Brussels sprouts too.  I shook some talcum powder on the remaining leaves, a trick I found on Google.  The bugs don’t like the finely ground silica in the powder.  Didn’t seem to help, though.

 I had pulled the garlic on the 4th of July. Big white bulbs with streaks of purple. Sometime in October,  I harvested the remaining peppers and tomatoes and pulled up the plants.

I had a bumper crop of Serranos and Habaneros.  The Poblanos had lots of healthy leaves, but the peppers were small.  The cherry tomatoes, especially the yellow ones, outdid the slicers.  The grape tomatoes were a bust. I’ll change things next year.

The garden was bare except for the Brussels sprouts.  They still looked bad.  The stalks were tall, and the tops had leafed out, but the sprouts were small.  When June visited in early November, she ran to the garden ahead of me.

“Oh Papa, it’s all gone!  Except for those Buster sprouts.”

“We had a good year.  Now we just have to wait to see what happens with our Brussels sprouts.  They’re on the menu for our Thanksgiving dinner.  Turkey and ham, cranberries, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole, and Brussel sprouts.”

“And punkin pie!” 

“Oh yeah, can’t forget your favorite.  Pumpkin pie.”

I looked again at the Brussels sprouts.  Still small.  They sell them on the stalk at the local Kroger around Thanksgiving.  At least I had a backup plan.

June and her Mom and Dad came the night before Thanksgiving.  She walked in our door with a pumpkin pie her Dad helped her make.  In the morning, we were working together to put the meal together when June’s Mom remembered something.

“Hey, what about the Brussels sprouts?  Where are they?”

“Still in the garden,” I said.  “June, let’s go get them.”

“OK, Papa!”  June’s enthusiasm is infectious.  She makes us all smile.

“First, we have to go to the shack and get my cleaver.  They’re not easy to cut.”

We brought the cleaver to the garden.

“Can I do it, Papa?”

"Not yet, June.  You can do it when you’re older.  This year you can bend them over, and I’ll do the chopping.”

June grabbed the top of the first plant and tilted it towards her.

“Farther June.  Bend it down till it almost touches the ground.”

June struggled a bit but was able to get the stalk parallel to the dirt, and I chopped it off.  We did it again for the other plant.

“How do they look, June?”

“They got big Papa.  And they used to be little.”

“They grow like you, June. Bigger all the time.”