Can’t slow this mustard down! Wish I had a bunch of mustard lovers down the road a little ways to help me eat it! Guess as long as I like I like mustard I won’t starve! The picture of my leg next to the mustard is to show it’s nearly waste tall!
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Not going to seed yet, I see
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No I think I will till in what I don’t eat as green manure and make sure the bad nematodes don’t come to live here. It should bump the humus up a lot in the soil which should help the worms and moisture levels…
I was really hoping it’d die back before I tilled it in with my little Mantis
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Clark, today I have a number of garden chores to do. One of them is to harvest trash greens in large mounts, fill gallon ziploc bags, and put them in the freezer. My wife juices them, they find their way in our daily bone broth (we make 5 gallons at a time), and also in chili type dishes. we are basically storing vitamin C, K and Mg for the cold season when we do not get enough.
I too have greens that are over-abundant. Most notably smallage, a type of wild celery. Today I have to dig up the roots of dozen plants which have covered some of my beds, and put them in my shadiest, least fertile beds. The rest I may have to spray because they do not allow me to use those beds. I also get huge amounts of turnip greens, mustard greens and daikon greens. The smallage and mustard greens are strictly volunteers. You can freeze 20% and till in the rest.
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Fantastic idea to juice some of them! Bone broth soup is greasy but when we make it we sit it on the porch in the cold and then break the fat off the top of the soup. We get all the good of bone broth that way and none of the bad. I wish I had an easy way to grind the bones into bone meal for the garden.
Being part of the high fat, low carb tribe, I suggest you take a second look at the fat and its metabolic health effects, which include lower risk of diabetes and CVD. TBH, I actually add some of my homemade lard and gelatin to my soups, on top of the fatty bone broth. But we both agree that trash greens should be used. They have a lot of nutrients, which are nearly 100% recovered in both broth and juice.
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I have to agree. From all the latest information I see the LCHF is better for your overall health. This method of eating has worked well lowering my A1C.
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High fats have caused me a lot of problems in recent years and I have cut back on them. Mustard and fats go together. Pork and mustard greens make a good combination but like everything it’s good in moderation.
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Can I publicly admit to a severe case of jealousy in looking at that mustard crop? I have been eating a lot of mustard greens in things like rice, grains, potatoes, etc, that are a little bland. They are great like this. Torn into little pieces, like quarter sized or half dollar, depending on your palate.
JohnS
PDX OR
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Thanks John I wish you were right down the road I would send you home with a pickup bed full of them. I have way to many of them! :0)
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I love mustard greens. I planted some I got from a nursery and they were amazing. This year,(the next year), I saw some seedlings, but we got a bunch of 90 degree days in May and it killed some of them. Then they grew but were spindly. Do you have to plant each year, Clark, or is that a recurring mustard patch?
THanks,
John S
PDX OR
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Sometimes i plant some but mostly they reseed themselves. It is great how it works out. Once the greens are harvested we love to use the seeds as well.
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Maybe I’ll try to grow some too in my former hay field. I like idea of having more low effort perennial or self sown annual food sources.
I love mizuna.
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Hesitate to show anyone how to do more work but here it goes the seeds make the best pickling spices Mustard seed Harvest . We also grow dill frequently which also can seed itself. We have made jar mustard from scratch etc. . Sometimes we go overboard on self sufficiency. Anyway we take a good cutting off the mustard and wind up with way to much then let it go to seed. Frequently we wind up with pounds of seed. We might till it in if we needed organic material but we really dont. Sometimes we grow rye or wheat in the winter in a similar way like an edible cover crop.
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Thanks for sharing, I’m definitely looking for more ways to be more self sufficient and to be more food secure.
Yup, I have a lot of volunteer dill, we love it and mint and cilantro, and parsley also come back year after year.
Not sure if you tried perilla, but it also volunteers like crazy.
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Have not tried perilla. Is it tasty? My mothers house beds are covered in lemon balm i planted her years ago. The original plants were kind of weak so i crossed them with catnip but you cannot tell. It looks and smells strictly like lemon balm. All the mints readily cross which is very useful if you want a weaker type to get stronger. It seeds and spreads just like catnip. Thought it would be best to keep that secret to myself until now.
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Perilla’s smell and flavor is strong but to me it’s savory and delicious when marinated in some soy sauce. There’s other pickling recipes too I’ve yet to try. We also put some leaves in salads as well, but just eaten raw by itself it may be too strong.
It’s an extremely vigorous grower (can be invasive), tend to come out later in the spring, and deer leave it alone due to the strong scent/taste.
The one I’m referring to is Perilla frutescens - Wikipedia
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I do like mustard greens, when they are prepared correctly, otherwise not so much.
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