Mustard greens
Feb. 25th, 2019 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beehammerSo this is the planter.
I planted Florida heirloom broadleaf by scattering the seeds on the surface of the soil, watering vigorously, and hand-weeding any unwanted plants or weeds that cropped up. The other plants are a mix of tropical sage, passionflower vine, violets, etc.--mostly native plants and selected to attract pollinators. The planter's about four feet across and about 5-6 inches deep. I used a whole packet of seed on this one patch of dirt, but it was an old packet so I really didn't expect much at all in terms of germination rate.
There are still tiny little mustard seedlings doing their thing and getting ready to grow once the bigger plants are harvested, too.
If your preferred method for harvest is to pull up the whole plant once it's fully mature, this isn't a great method--it's hard to pull out one plant without disturbing or damaging the ones close to it, at that proximity. It probably also isn't a great bet for mustard types that get fairly sizeable before they're mature. For Florida broadleaf, the plant seems to be pretty tolerant of the partial harvest method, where you trim off individual leaves as they get big enough to have that pepperiness and leave the rest of the plant alone, and most sources I've seen have recommended eating the leaves when they're 3-6 inches long, after which they get a bit tough and almost bitter.
So far with a bed this size, I've gotten about a colander full of greens each time I've gone out to harvest. They cook down aggressively, but it's enough for a side dish for one person or to spice up a main dish for everyone. And the great thing about thinning greens, if your plants wind up too closely bunched to grow right, is that you just eat the greens you've thinned.
So it can't hurt to try, and seed packets are cheap enough to make it worth your while. Even with the age of my seeds, this is about a month after sowing, after two rounds of harvesting. In my case, I might not have enough cold weather left for the current seedlings to make it to eating-size without bolting, but they're an heirloom variety, so I should be able to save any seed the late bloomers produce for next winter.
One of the things I've found with raised bed gardening, and with spending a while gardening mostly for pollinators and wildlife, is that I now have a much healthier reservoir of insect predators hanging around waiting to spring into action if they spot an aphid or beetles. Last time I tried food-gardening, the yard wasn't worth much of anything as habitat, and I had aphids and scale bugs and leafcutters and just about every other kind of gnarly insect you could wind up with crawling all up in my containers.
I was also able to go hog-wild with coffee grounds earlier in the year, which help keep ants from colonizing the planters and upsetting the apple cart by guarding aphids against predation. The ladybugs were out in force in this planter today cleaning off the passionflower vine, and the mild winter means that the paper wasps never quite went dormant, so stray caterpillars haven't been a problem either. The feral lot next door even helps out by hosting hawks and owls that keep rabbits from being much of an issue.
There are definitely reasons you might want to go the neat, wide-spaced rows route when it comes to mustard greens--it certainly makes harvesting quicker and easier, especially if you're trying to feed a large number of people--but I'd say you don't really have to if you don't have high numbers of pests around waiting to wreck your whole crop. Plus I've heard that mustard greens are hell on nematodes, so even if you don't get much yield for your seed, growing the mustard can help future crops you plant in that bed have a healthier time of it.
If you haven't already, it might be worth your while to check out David Goodman's Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening. Most of his advice is more applicable to your section of Florida than mine, and I still found it to be a very helpful overview of possibilities and strategies.
Good luck, and happy growing! :D
I planted Florida heirloom broadleaf by scattering the seeds on the surface of the soil, watering vigorously, and hand-weeding any unwanted plants or weeds that cropped up. The other plants are a mix of tropical sage, passionflower vine, violets, etc.--mostly native plants and selected to attract pollinators. The planter's about four feet across and about 5-6 inches deep. I used a whole packet of seed on this one patch of dirt, but it was an old packet so I really didn't expect much at all in terms of germination rate.
There are still tiny little mustard seedlings doing their thing and getting ready to grow once the bigger plants are harvested, too.
If your preferred method for harvest is to pull up the whole plant once it's fully mature, this isn't a great method--it's hard to pull out one plant without disturbing or damaging the ones close to it, at that proximity. It probably also isn't a great bet for mustard types that get fairly sizeable before they're mature. For Florida broadleaf, the plant seems to be pretty tolerant of the partial harvest method, where you trim off individual leaves as they get big enough to have that pepperiness and leave the rest of the plant alone, and most sources I've seen have recommended eating the leaves when they're 3-6 inches long, after which they get a bit tough and almost bitter.
So far with a bed this size, I've gotten about a colander full of greens each time I've gone out to harvest. They cook down aggressively, but it's enough for a side dish for one person or to spice up a main dish for everyone. And the great thing about thinning greens, if your plants wind up too closely bunched to grow right, is that you just eat the greens you've thinned.
So it can't hurt to try, and seed packets are cheap enough to make it worth your while. Even with the age of my seeds, this is about a month after sowing, after two rounds of harvesting. In my case, I might not have enough cold weather left for the current seedlings to make it to eating-size without bolting, but they're an heirloom variety, so I should be able to save any seed the late bloomers produce for next winter.
One of the things I've found with raised bed gardening, and with spending a while gardening mostly for pollinators and wildlife, is that I now have a much healthier reservoir of insect predators hanging around waiting to spring into action if they spot an aphid or beetles. Last time I tried food-gardening, the yard wasn't worth much of anything as habitat, and I had aphids and scale bugs and leafcutters and just about every other kind of gnarly insect you could wind up with crawling all up in my containers.
I was also able to go hog-wild with coffee grounds earlier in the year, which help keep ants from colonizing the planters and upsetting the apple cart by guarding aphids against predation. The ladybugs were out in force in this planter today cleaning off the passionflower vine, and the mild winter means that the paper wasps never quite went dormant, so stray caterpillars haven't been a problem either. The feral lot next door even helps out by hosting hawks and owls that keep rabbits from being much of an issue.
There are definitely reasons you might want to go the neat, wide-spaced rows route when it comes to mustard greens--it certainly makes harvesting quicker and easier, especially if you're trying to feed a large number of people--but I'd say you don't really have to if you don't have high numbers of pests around waiting to wreck your whole crop. Plus I've heard that mustard greens are hell on nematodes, so even if you don't get much yield for your seed, growing the mustard can help future crops you plant in that bed have a healthier time of it.
If you haven't already, it might be worth your while to check out David Goodman's Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening. Most of his advice is more applicable to your section of Florida than mine, and I still found it to be a very helpful overview of possibilities and strategies.
Good luck, and happy growing! :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-26 04:52 am (UTC)Your planter's simply divine with everything growing so harmoniously in it. I loved mixed planters like that. I'm going to try the heirloom mustard green seeds as I'm intrigued now. We have a longer cold season than your location does but even so, if I don't order them soon I risk them bolting before they produce anything of value (or just not producing anything of value before say, late next fall).
I was also able to go hog-wild with coffee grounds earlier in the year, which help keep ants from colonizing the planters and upsetting the apple cart by guarding aphids against predation.
The coffee grounds are a good tip (that they keep ants from colonizing planters and that ants protect aphids from predation are facts I *did not* know before, so thanks!) so I need to start saving ours (I could probably bury this place up to the second floor with what we discard every year - no shortfall there).
And I've bookmarked David Goodman's Totally Crazy Easy Florida Gardening to buy for the Kindle. It'll give me a reason to see if the Kindle app on my phone's working or not; if it is I'll get some good reading of it, I'm sure. Thanks again! :)
no subject
Date: 2019-03-03 12:53 am (UTC)The coffee grounds are something I figured out after a minor disaster with my first batch of tomatoes, way back in the day. Ants got into my containers, and I couldn't figure out why nothing was getting after the aphids at all until I noticed that they were being driven off by patrolling ants. Turns out it's A Thing--some species will actually farm aphids for their honeydew.
Since I definitely didn't want to just strew poison all over my food plants, I looked into natural and food-safe repellents. Coffee's not the only one out there, but it's effective, cheap, and pretty ubiquitous--plus I've never heard of it interfering with plant growth. I still have ants, of course, but not in places and numbers where they turn into a problem for plant maintenance.
Good luck with your mustard greens, and no problem!