Mustard Leaves Green in the Snow
By midsummer your appetite for lettuce leaves may be getting a little jaded. Conveniently this is when tasty oriental salad leaves like mustard and mizuna come into their own. From sowing they'll be ready to pick within a few weeks, plus they're a 'cut and come again' plant so just chop all the leaves off leaving about 1in poking out of the soil and it'll re-grow 4-5 times. Green in the Snow will even survive right into the winter, as its name suggests.
Like Mizuna, it's best to hold off sowing mustard leaves until the start of July because earlier in the year it will attract flea beetles that will pepper the leaves with holes, and it will bolt - rush up an produce flowers instead of leaves.
Time from seed to plate: 6 weeks
Sowing Calendar
Sow
Fill a grow bed with multipurpose compost and make a shallow groove parallel to one side where you're going to sow the seeds. It needs to be about 1cm deep. Sprinkle the seed into the groove, about one every 2cm and cover with a thin layer of compost.
Alternatively sow the seed sparingly in a wide pot. Water and label.
Grow
Once the seedlings are growing start thinning out the smaller ones so you end up with a plant every 10cm or so. Plants in trugs can be left closer because they've more room to bush out.
Keep an eye out for caterpillars and pick them off by hand.
Harvest
Mustard leaves grow to 8in, but they're at their best when they're nice and juicy at 4in.
In the summer when it's growing fast pick by chopping everything off to leave behind a stump 1in above ground. This will quickly regrow. Make sure you keep picking to stop it from running up to produce seed.
In the winter when it's growing more slowly it pays to be a little gentler. 'Pick round' by pulling off the outside leaves, letting the centre ones carry on growing uncut.
Like all salad leaves immerse them in cold water for an hour after picking to plump up the leaves.