"John Vanini" wrote
I was told that if Brussel sprouts are planted or sown in loose soil the
sprouts will not be tight but will be very open leaved and useless as
sprouts.
I've always ignored this and never bothered with tamping down the soil
but, this year, I had to pull up and throw away my row of sprouts because
they were so open leaved as to be useless.
Luckily, I planted a row of a later variety of Brussel sprout plants
sometime after I had the problem, still in loose soil, and these look
fine.
What I've was told seems to be true, however, but has anyone else more
experience of the problem and could it be caused by something else?
I'd be pleased to hear anyone else's experience as I can't see how the
firmness of the soil relates to the firmness of the sprouts.

With silt/clay soil we never have a problem with loose soil, a good raining
on and it will set hard. That said, this year we too have a few sprouts that
have "blown" at the bottom of plants, must be the weather. Also noticed that
our "Icarus" sprout plants haven't grown like they normally do, look
healthy, just small and somehow not right. The Trafalgar plants are as
robust as usual.

Regarding the criticism of your posting methods, don't worry about it, same
happened to me years ago when I first started posting to Newsgroups. It's
just people want consistency to make the job of reading easy. I think all
the childish troll stuff is having an effect on posters too.
There are a lot of very knowledgeable/experienced gardeners here amongst
some others, time will enable you to see who is who. :-)

--
Regards
Bob Hobden