Growing mustard for seeds is best done in spring, because lengthening days trigger mustard plants to produce flowers. Technically, many popular Asian greens including mizuna and tatsoi are mustards, but varieties with broader leaves are synonymous with garden mustard. Mustard seed germination is fast and sure, so you can simply scatter the seeds over a renovated bed and then pat them in with your hand or the back of a rake.
Within two weeks the planted area will be transformed into a sea of green, with very few weeds. Mustard greens that grow in warm weather usually have very strong flavor, which gentles down considerably as nights become longer and cooler in the fall. Fortunately, mustard plants are very willing to regrow should you opt to lop off and compost huge handfuls of summer-grown mustard greens.
Before this happens, I chop down the old plants and mix the chopped roots and greens into the soil, because rotting mustard tissues suppress nematodes and several common soil diseases. If this is the main benefit you want from mustard, simply grow your mustard as a cover crop. A few weeks ago, one of the last things I did before leaving on vacation was to sow mustard in the beds where I had just harvested spring carrots and early potatoes. Less than a month later the beds are wall-to-wall mustard greens, with hardly a weed in sight.
When sown in late summer, mustard grows so vigorously that weeds are smothered into submission. Rather than eat all those mustard greens, I will chop them up using a sharp lawn edger, and then quickly turn them under using a digging fork.
Numerous studies have shown that live mustard plant tissues, both seeds and roots, contain compounds that work as soil biofumigants by killing nematodes and pathogenic fungi.
Reaping this benefit requires handling mustard like a green manure, because the beneficial compounds are released within hours after the plants are chopped down. But if you wait two weeks after turning under chopped mustard and then plant lettuce, you can expect a very productive crop with very few weeds.
Potato and vegetable farmers have begun using special mustard varieties as part of their rotation practices to suppress weeds and diseases. The method involves planting selected strains of mustard bred to produce high levels of glucosinolates in spring, and quickly chopping them up and turning them under in summer, when they reach full bloom.
Used this way, mustard has a cleansing effect on soils that are carrying heavy pathogen loads. Mustard varieties to try for this purpose include Caliente , IdaGold and Kodiak. On a practical note, the hardest part of the process will be obtaining the little jars to store the stuff in!
Those jars don't grow on trees so start saving them up now before you begin planting. Although it's a cool weather crop great for the UK in spring and early summer it does prefer a full sun or light partial shade position. Expect the plants to grow to about 60cm high. One key point with mustard plants is to remember that they are from the same family as broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower etc.
The best time to sow the seeds is a couple of weeks before the last frost date so sow mustard seeds around mid April. The seedlings should appear in a week to ten days and grow rapidly. Your mustard plants will grow quickly and reach about 60cm tall in 6 weeks or so when the yellow sometimes white flowers appear and the pods begin to form. You will encounter one possible problem with mustard plants, slugs and snails.
The damp and dense foliage will become a favourite hiding place for them. They won't attack the mustard plants but will come out of their hiding place at night to attack nearby plants so be aware of that. Store the pods in a warmish place inside a house is fine which is also dry. The pods will ripen after two weeks or so.
Now the time-consuming phase: lightly squash the pods and the seeds will be released. It's these seeds which should separated from the pod casing and debris to be used to make mustard.
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