HARVESTING MUSTARD GREENS
Mustard greens are a very hardy plant which can be grown in the winter under a polytunnel or greenhouse. They do not need a lot of light to grow. I have grown mustard greens during the summer, and I found the taste to be much stronger and peppery during the warmer seasons. In the winter they tend to have a more mild taste.
When you are harvesting the leaves be sure to let a reasonable amount of the plant and its leaves remain, as this will allow more leaves to regrow for harvesting in future.
Here in my polytunnel I have managed to grow and harvest quite a decent crop, which I am very happy with. I found that these plants are quite hardy and are a good choice for people who may be looking to start their garden during the colder time of the year, and is looking for a quick turn around.
Today is the 27th of January and believe it or not but we will be doing some harvesting in the middle of the cold. I am really happy to be able to actually harvest food to eat in the middle of winter.
These are my lovely mustard greens they’re so huge look at the size of these nice mustard green
Transcript of Video:
Harvesting Mustard Greens In Winter Allotment
This is going to be for dinner today so I’ll just go through and harvest all these lovelies so you can see what my harvest. Then I’ll take you to the allotment and show you what’s going on out there. So let’s harvest these first and then these are really nice. Imagine we had snow so many days we had a hard frost we had everything going on and to be able to still have a good harvest in winter that’s just superb. My nice mustard greens, look at the size of these leaves, look it’s huge it’s humongous.
All I’m going to do is soak these in some baking soda and salt and then I’ll be having some nice mustard green later for tea. I just harvest all of these so you can see.
If you haven’t tried growing mustard greens please do, I have some in the garden at home I did not know they would survive the snow outside. They are uncovered and they’re doing beautifully.
I need to show you this one look at this mustard green leaf, look at the size of it, hope you can see it. Properly look at the size of this mustard green right here it’s humongous.
Look at it, it’s huge so I just continue to harvest all of these and then I can show you at the end the final harvest. I am so proud to imagine if you have seen a mustard seed it is so tiny and yet it produces these massive leaves. The seeds are super tiny but look at the size greens they product. I’m just cutting off the other leaves and the inner leaves will continue to grow.
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When harvesting, make sure to keep an eye out for slugs, as you don’t get one of them in your evening meal
I’m so pleased it’s a bit dark in here hope you can see me properly they are huge they are humongous if you haven’t tried mustard greens before please do have a go.
Mustard greens are very hardy plants, the more you cut them the more they will spring back. So I could have probably got a second cutting from these but I didn’t have the time to come to the allotment and harvest these.
Look at my lovely mustard greens so this basket here I don’t know if you can see it’s loaded with greens everywhere.
So please if you haven’t tried this, They are a bit spicy but because i’m harvesting these over winter. So in the winter the spicy taste is not has harsh as in summer. Mustard greens are really peppery in summer, think of a radish and you have a little hint of peppery taste this is like 80 times worse. It’s really peppery but it’s a nice peppery cayenne type taste.
I have not tried them over the winter I tried them in the summer and it was very hot. Now that I harvest it in heart of winter today is the 27th of January and I’m harvesting in my polytunnel on the allotment. Isn’t that lovely to have a crop to harvest in winter. I’m having these later, and then I’m going to show you what’s left in the ground. I could cut off some more so there’s some left there to spring back up that is the remainder of the mustard.
You can see we have cut it off there so you can see all the bits that i’ve cut. I probably should have taken off some more because there’s some good size leave left. But I think I’ll come back probably a week and a half from now and harvest those. There is a lot of mustard greens left, so please do have a go at growing some of these lovely greens.
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