Japanese Mustard - Chirimen Hakarashi

DESCRIPTION

An extremely popular variety of mustard in Japan, Chirimen Hakarashi is a beautiful food plant with bright green, curly leaves. With a particularly spicy mustard flavour, the leaves, stems, and seeds of this plant are all delicious and nutritionally dense.

POT CARE AND PLANTING

This type of mustard is great for pots and containers - transplant into a larger pot or a garden bed within 7 days. Soil level should be 1mm below the start of the lowest leaves.

WATERING

Mustard is a medium water consumer - water it an average amount, once per day (early morning or late afternoon is best in summer).

SUN EXPOSURE

This variety of mustard needs at least half a day of sun - I recommend planting it near an east or west facing wall.

COMPANION PLANTING

This variety is broad-leaved and gets about 30cm wide, and will grow up to 50cm tall at first. If you don't harvest the flowering stems before the flowers open, they will eventually double the height of the plant. Brassicas will grow best close to amaranths, apiums, asters, alliums, and other brassicas - leaving enough space for the largest plants to expand. Try to plant other things in between your brassicas to confuse pests- plants in this family can be well protected from attack by the Cabbage White butterfly using a number of companion planting techniques - see "Growing your food" for more. Allowing brassicas to flower during the winter provides habitat for beneficial insects and helps to maintain the presence of pollinators during the colder months.

HARVESTING AND EATING

The leaves, stem, flowers, and seeds of this mustard can be eaten at different times, and all parts have a sharp, spicy mustard flavour. In the early stages, the leaves can be eaten raw as a baby green, as long as a good amount of leaves are still left on the plant. Later on they are better cooked, especially in stir fries, but they can also be steamed, sauteed, or added to soups and curries. As the plant gets more mature, the spiciness will continue to increase, until you try the flowering stem. When the plant gets big enough to start producing a flower spike, water it extra for a few days to encourage the stem to swell up and develop a cloudy looking coating, as the mustard flowers get closer to opening. At this point, you can use your fingers to find the lowest point on the flower stem where it will snap instead of bending - this is your first stem harvest, and you can use it the same way as the leaves. It will be much spicier than the flowering stalks of other brassicas like the Chinese broccoli, but the juicy heart of the stem will still be sweet and tender. Water it some more and enjoy the more tender leaves while you wait for more flowering stalks to grow from the same plant. Harvest them the same way until the season ends, or leave some in place to produce seed for you. The flowers can still be eaten after they open, but less of the stem will be tender, and the pollen has an even more potent flavour. If you want to collect the seeds, leave plenty of these flower stalks uneaten - because the dried seed is a delicious spice you can fill a jar with and use in place of any other mustard seed.  You can also sprout your seeds and enjoy this vegetable as a super spicy microgreen.

SEED SAVING AND PROPAGATION

If you let the flowers open and leave the stems on the plant, eventually they'll produce branches loaded with tiny pods full of seeds that are super easy to save and propagate. They'll take a few weeks to finish their life cycle, but when you see that the flowering stem is starting to die back, cut it off and dry it whole in a paper bag. Shake and crunch the pods in the bag to release the seeds and discard the larger bits of plant material - these seeds will be good for up to 6 years! You can re-sow your own crop right away, or save some of your mustard seeds over the winter in something airtight. I recommend keeping the rest in an old spice jar in the kitchen. They're super easy to germinate - simply cover with about 10mm of soil and keep moist, when daytime temperatures are above about 12 degrees.