How to Grow Mizuna

Fast, mild and hardy enough to crop when the lettuce has given up.

Mizuna is a Japanese mustard green with feathery, deeply cut leaves and a mild peppery bite, far gentler than most mustards. It is one of the fastest and most forgiving salad crops there is, and it will take cold that stops almost everything else.

Sowing

Sow in September, October, November, December, January, February. Scatter or drill about a centimetre deep. For cut-and-come-again leaves sow thickly and do not thin. For full heads, thin to 20 cm.

Sow a short row every two or three weeks rather than one long row, because mizuna is quick and a single sowing all arrives at once.

Growing it

• It prefers cool. Heat makes it bolt and turns the flavour sharp. In hot regions grow it in part shade or keep it to the cool months.
• Keep it damp. Dry soil is the other thing that triggers bolting.
• It is cold hardy. It shrugs off light frost and keeps producing under a cover long after lettuce has given up.
• Flea beetle is the usual pest, peppering the leaves with small holes. A fine mesh cover from sowing solves it.

Harvesting

Cut baby leaves from about three weeks, taking the outer ones and leaving the centre. It regrows readily and a single sowing gives three or four cuts before it tires.

Or cut the whole plant a couple of centimetres above the crown and it will often sprout again from the base.

In the kitchen

Raw in a salad it adds a peppery lift without the heat of rocket. It also stands up to brief cooking better than most salad leaves, wilted into a stir fry at the last moment, folded through noodles, or stirred into a soup off the heat.

The flowering stems are edible too, and sweeter than the leaves, so a plant that has bolted is not wasted.

See also: How to Grow Mizuna in the Plant Library for sowing months tuned to your region.