Allotments 4 All

Afternoon all,
Just received my veg delivery box this morning and got a bag of sprouts and also the top of the sprout stick with some tiny baby sprouts and also huge big leaves - can I eat these and if so what do I do with them?
???

Sprout tops are very tasty, just treat them like greens. Destalk, shred and pop into boiling salted water and cook until tender (4-5 mins). I also drop the tiny sprouts in too.

Yum!

I much prefer the tops to the actual sprouts - really looking forward to decapitating mine! when can I do this - do I need to wait for all the sprout to form?

My sprout tops have been eaten by something not sure what, signs could be that its birds so I will not get to try these.

Sprout tops are lovely! If you go to a veg market you can find them for about 5p a kilo - but that price was 25yrs ago when I was a poor student and lived on £5 a week for food.

Ditto Trixiebelle but about 15 years ago off Leicester market for about 10p :)  That was when it was by-product prices.  Now it is a "super food" with prices to match ::)

Still delicious though.

PS, sprout tops can be cut anytime - they are cut early to get all the sprouts to fatten up uniformily but then the crop ends - the stalk is cut and the sprouts harvested all at once.  if the tops are left on, the spruts are ready over a longer period of time and can be harvested in succession.  The sprout tops can then be harvested later.

what about the leaves lower down? Some of my neighbours have de-leaved their sprouts apart from the tops leaving knobbly stalks. What benefit does this have to the sprouts?
I took off some lower leaves the other week but it's been piddling down since so haven't been back to have a look - hopefully I didn't do this too early!

I take off the leaves as they die so that any illness they have doesn't spread to the rest of the plant.  I also think that it decreases their wid resistance so they don't rock so much ;D