Giant Red Japanese Mustard

This colorful and versatile ‘green’ can grow to 18” tall. The showy deep reddish purple savoy leaves are accented by pale green veins, margins, and undersides. Giant Red Japanese Mustard deserves a place in spring, fall, and winter gardens even if you don’t plan on eating your five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. With its bold leaves and splendid colors it is equally at home in the company of flowers, herbs, or vegetables.

Foodies will love the versatility of this colorful mustard. At each stage of growth it offers something for the kitchen. When the plants are young, the mild flavored leaves make an excellent addition to salads and sandwiches. The young leaves also make a brilliant garnish, especially when combined with a few edible flowers and a sprig or two of curled parsley.

Later, when the leaves are large they have lots more bite. When raw, they taste exactly like wasabi. Cooking mellows them, but if you like hot stuff, use them raw in salads, coleslaws, and other dishes. They can be used to make a pesto that may clear up your spring time hay fever in a jiffy, just by sheer heat. (Whiz up a cup or two of raw red mustard greens with a little olive oil in a food processor. You can fancy up and cool down your pesto with crushed walnuts, pine nuts, or ricotta cheese. Start with a tablespoon of each of your additions. Add more, if you like, according to taste. And don’t forget a little salt. Serve on crackers or pasta. And pass the Kleenex please.)

Cooked the mustard still retains lots of flavor, but the heat is curbed. A single large leaf will add deep green color and rich flavor to a pot of soup. The flavor complements other greens such as kale, collards, cabbage, and chard. It goes well with onions, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, and all the common ingredients of soups and stews. Nutritionists have long touted the benefits of dark leafy green vegetables. You can’t get much darker than this giant red mustard. If you are after the nutritional benefits of the dark leafy greens you can’t go wrong. Mustard can be steamed, wilted, sautéed, or prepared like any other green. How about a spicy mustard dip instead of spinach? (In fact if you suffer from migraines you might consider replacing all spinach, chard, and beet greens with low amine mustards and kales. You might even feel better!)

When summer comes mustard will bolt, flower and set seed. The spicy flowers and young seed pods are edible and excellent in salads. The flowers can also be used as edible garnishes, and frozen in ice cubes to dress up spicy tomato based drinks. The pods can be added to mixed steamed vegetables, soups, and stir fries. Even the stalk is edible, if peeled. It makes a spicy crunchy celery substitute. However, don’t cut all your mustards stalks. Leave some to set seed for next seasons crop.

Giant Red Japanese Mustard is easy to grow. Nurseries seldom stock young plants so you may have to start with seed. It’s a Brassica, which makes it related to cabbage, broccoli, and radishes. Their seeds are not as fussy about temperature as are some other vegetables. Seeds can be sown in any garden soil, or in 6 packs in a sunny window or on a bright porch. Just keep the soil moist and out of direct frost. In about a week to ten days (if not sooner) you should see cheery little seedlings beginning to grow. There is no need to wait until after the last frost. You can start your mustard seed as long as he weather stays cool.

Like all seedlings this red mustard is susceptible to damage and decimation by our constant adversary, the lowly garden slug. If you’re gardens are hounded by this scourge, you will have the best luck starting your seeds indoors. Once the seedlings have reached a few inches in height, and have begun to develop the mustards characteristic bite, the slugs will probably move on in search of milder fare. (“Hey, isn’t there some iceberg lettuce around here somewhere?”) If the vile creatures continue to attack your plants, hand picking mornings and evenings is helpful, as are pie pans full of cheap beer. Slugs will often volunteer to drown themselves in the brew, even if it is stale and flat.  For more information on discouraging slugs, please see my post on Slug Control.

It takes about a month from transplanting until you can begin picking your first leaves. Plants started now will continue to produce until hot weather arrives. If you find you enjoy the Giant Red Japanese Mustard as much as I do, you will also want to grow some for summer time use. Plants started in late May or June will need to be planted on the north side of the house, or another spot where they will have shade for most of the day. You may need to make successive sowings because the heat of summer encourages them to flower quickly instead of growing a continuous crop of leaves. They will need ample summertime water to coax them along.

Giant Mustard is also productive when planted in the fall. Fall plantings provide very welcome fresh greens all winter. Their spiciness is a bonus at a time when many other herbs are dormant. And their bold colorful leaves can brighten dreary and dormant flower beds. And now I know you are wanting to get some for yourself! You probably know just the spot that needs a colorful and tasty accent . . .

Seeds for Giant Red Japanese Mustard are available through many mail order seed catalogs. They are a bit unusual and may not be in stock at your local nursery, but it never hurts to ask. If you don’t find them locally or in any of your seed catalogs, they can be ordered by mail or on line from: http://www.evergreenseeds.com/


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Copyright Harvest McCampbell, 2006,  2015.  All rights reserved.  Please feel free to use the buttons below to e-mail, re-blog, tweet, share, or pin this post.

Sun or more storms ahead?

Dear Readers,

I have had a kind of busy couple of days. On Thursday I rode the clinic’s van out to an appointment to get my bone density measured. While I am not all that much in favor of western medicine or ex-rays – in this case I recommend it. Something like three out of five women, get osteoporosis in their life times. This painful, debilitating, and crippling disease can be prevented for the most part.

A diet low in sugar, protein, saturated and trans fat is a good place to start. Adequate protein is necessary for health – but many of us eat way too much. The next dietary considerations that are helpful – high fiber, lots of dark green leafy vegetables, and complex carbohydrates. (Which brings us back to the garden!)

Also important are regular rhythmic exercise – weight bearing if possible. Walking is the best, but swimming or cycling will help if you are unable to walk. Aim for at least 30 minutes a day, even if you have to work up slowly.

Supplementation with calcium, vitamins A & D, as well as folic acid, magnesium, and trace minerals is also helpful. Some people think the supplements are necessary, as we know longer grind out food in limestone mortars or grind up bones to add to our food. We are also unlikely to boil bones for broth – all this added calcium and minerals to the traditional diet. Modern diets are impoverished of minerals. I certainly take supplements and urge you to talk to your doctor or nutritionist about preventing osteoporosis.

Young people and men can get this disease. It is recommended to get your bone density measured once between 35 and 45, again 6 months to a year after menopause, and third test 1 – 2 years after that. This is just if none of these tests find anything. After the third test – if there are no signs of bone loss testing is done once every five years.

Now should they find that your bones are not as dense as they should be, I recommend starting off with all the natural remedies listed above. If you are all ready using them, try switching your calcium supplement to another form of calcium. The medication they prescribe can be problematic – it comes with side effects. Be sure to research side effects, contra-indications, and interactions before beginning any medications. Another woman in to have her bone density measured had depressed kidney function - down to 20% as a result of the medication. However she was not able to stand erect and had trouble walking. Osteoporosis is not something you want to get.

Anyway, I didn’t get back up the mountain till after five - and went straight to my friends house in Willow Creek – remember the Angel that did some of my shopping? That’s where I went. I got out of my jeans and into a my red skirt, a multi-colored knit blouse (black, red, etc – chevron stripes), a black and red sweater, and a black and red shawl, and we headed over to the poetry performance. We had quite a number of readers – I was one of them – and it was fun. The food was pretty dang good too.

I had trouble sleeping that night, because of muscle spasms, but I am some better now.

Lets see . . .

I got one of my other day lilies in the ground. I did nothing to protect them from gophers – so we shall see. I have some day lilies starting from seed too. I might tuck them into a raised bed when they are ready. I just don’t have a place in a bed big enough for the larger plants right at the moment.

I have more tomatoes seedlings coming up, and the snake gourd is out on the back porch – outside for the first time. I have it tucked up against the house where it can get some sun, but where it is protected from the wind. This is its first time outside. I have been checking on it every little while.

The flat of seedlings I carry in at night is having a kind of mixed time. Some are doing very well, some are suffering from lack of sun – today is the first sun we have seen in weeks, and some are being bullied by some sort of hitchhiker. Probably a tiny slug that I have been unable to find. So I doused the afflicted cells and quite a few of the other cells with some tobacco tea. I would have doused them all – but I ran out. So I now have more tobacco tea brewing on the porch.

Lets, see, the Agapanthus are doing great. One croaked – but I have 29 more . . .

It is mostly sunny today, here – but breezy and cool. Almost spring, and almost spring weather.

Hope you all are having fun in your gardens!

Harvest

Angels, Angels everywhere,

Dear Readers,

Last night, after spending most of the afternoon plotting the bus route and readying my bus fares – dang broken brain anyway, everything takes so much longer than before the accident – an Angel called me on the phone and offered to pick up the things in town that I was going to get today! So, just for today, I don’t have to leave the valley!

Hey, Remember those plums out my office window I told you were blooming? They are seedlings from my Prunus nigra, only a few years old. Well, after all the storms and snow and everything, they still are full of brilliant white flowers. From here they look larger than the flowers of their parent – and their stems are definitely greener then their parent – I am going to have to go out there and take a better look at those flowers! I will let you know all about it after a bit.

Ahhh . . . . I got off here and went to the local libraries anniversary celebration. That was fun. They had speakers and dignitaries and food. I took a bunch of pics – now we will have to see if I can figure out how to download them . . .

I have slowly been reading through my Cottage Living Magazine – it has a great article on seed swapping, and there is a really cool article on gardening with annuals. They have photos of an eye popping front yard almost completely planted with annuals.

On the home front – I actually got out and dug a hole, fed the worms, and planted a day lily. Now a storm is blowing in!

Hope you are all safe, warm, and dry!

Harvest