Oriental Salad – Mustard ‘Green Frills’
€1.95
Description
Oriental Salad – Mustard ‘Green Frills’ is an amazing salad ingredient, with very serrated green leaves and has excellent flavour and texture.
Oriental salads are excellent from late summer onwards right through the winter if grown under protection. However, in spring they are very prone to fleabeetle attacks and therefore, are best avoided unless grown under a fleece.
Sowing:
Sow small amounts every 3 weeks from late June until late September. Seeds can be sown directly into the ground or into modular trays (5 seeds per cell) and planted out 4 weeks after sowing.
Spacing:
Between rows: 25cm
Between plants in the row: 25cm (5 seedlings per station)
Approx. seed count: 200
Growing Oriental Mustards:
Oriental Salad – Mustard ‘Green Frills’
Latin name:
Brassica juncea
Family:
Brassicaceae
Introduction:
Oriental mustards are starting to become very popular. They make an excellent addition to any salads and provide beautiful colour, shape and spice. There is an ever increasing range of varieties available and in addition they are very hardy. Also they may be the only crop that will survive a harsh winter.
Frilly-leaved mustarda:
These are my favourites. The leaves are the most attractive leaves in a salad bowl and to no surprise they are very finely serrated. There are three excellent varieties: ‘Red Frills’, ‘Green Frills’ and ‘Golden Streaks’. I highly recommend any of them.
Soil and site:
Oriental mustards do well in any reasonably fertile soil.
Sowing:
The best time to sow oriental mustards for planting into the tunnel or greenhouse is in late August until early October. I usually sow 5-7 seeds in each module. The modular transplants are ready for planting out about 5 weeks after sowing.
You can make more successional sowing from late January until April however, they never perform as well as the autumn sowing.
Spacing:
Between rows: 25cm
Between plants: 20cm (5 plants per station)
Plant care:
It is essential to keep the plot completely weed free and furthermore keep it watered regularly.
Harvesting:
Not only can you harvest individual leaves as required but also you can use the cut and come again method: cut the whole plant at about 5cm height from the soil level and the leaves will re-grow. This procedure is repeated every two to three weeks.
Potential problems:
Oriental Brassica Salad – Mustard ‘Green Frills’ suffers from all general brassica diseases. Fleabeetles cause the most havoc. The symptoms show hundreds of tiny little ‘shotholes’ through the leaves that are caused by a tiny shiny black beetle that jumps off the leaves when disturbed. However, the autumn and late winter sowing will escape the fleabeetle. So if you are determined to grow oriental mustards in spring and summer you will have to cover the beds as soon as they are planted with a fine netting such as fleece or a fine Enviromesh.
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https://greenvegetableseeds.com/newsletters/
Have a look at the Irish Garden magazine:
