Grow Your Own Mustard Greens

If you're getting bored of spinach or lettuce in your salads, shake things up a bit with the tangy, peppery bite of mustard greens.

The leaves of mustard greens can be frilled or smooth, light green, purple, or reddish. When mustard greens are ready to produce seeds at the end of their growing season, they'll send up pretty little yellow flowers that are the color of the condiment that is made from the crushed seeds and that gets its name from this delicious and nutritious little plant.

Like other leafy greens, mustard greens are fairly easy to grow and don't require any special care or next-level gardening abilities. They grow quickly and do well in containers or raised beds.

Mustard Greens Are Similar to Collard Greens and Kale

Mustard greens, collard greens, kale, cabbage, and other leafy greens are all in the same plant family (the nutritious brassica family), and it can be really hard to tell between them sometimes. Mustard greens are the only one in this bunch that can also be considered an herb as well as a salad green (since its seeds are used to make mustard).

Mustard greens vs collard greens

Mustard greens are often a lighter green and typically max out at 2 feet, while collard greens plants can grow up to 3 feet tall. The leaves of mustard greens are more tender than collards and will shrink more if cooked. The flavor of mustard greens is also more peppery and less bitter than collards.

Mustard greens vs kale

The leaves of both are packed with nutrients and antioxidants, including high levels of vitamins K, A, and C. One major difference is that kale is a perennial that can grow for several years in your garden, while mustard greens will go to seed at the end of one growing season. The leaves of mustard greens will, again, taste much more peppery than mild kale leaves.

In the harvest basket pictured below, you can see some red kale leaves alongside mustard leaves.

When Is Mustard Greens Season?

Mustard greens are cool season plants. That means these plants grow best and produce tastier leaves when the temps are between 45°F and 75°F. 

If you live somewhere with cold winters, you'll do best growing your mustard greens in the fall and spring. Mustard greens can tolerate a light frost and temperatures into the 20s, though they're not as cold-tolerant as their cousins, kale and collard greens. Just a little bit of frost will actually make the leaves of mustard greens sweeter.

If you live somewhere with a milder winter, you can grow mustard greens during your winter months—just be ready to cover them with frost cloth or a floating row cover if you are expecting a hard freeze.

Mustard greens will typically finish up once the temperature gets too warm in the summer.

Where to Grow Mustard Greens

Mustard greens can be grown in either a raised garden bed or containers. You can plant them near the edge of your space since they don't get very tall until near the end of their time in the garden. (If you're really short on growing space, consider growing mustard greens indoors as microgreens.)

Ideally, the planting location you select should receive full or partial sun (6 hours of direct sun is ideal). Like other leafy greens, however, mustard greens will continue to grow with less sun, though they may not produce as many leaves as they would in a brighter location.

Before you sow mustard seeds, add a layer of fresh compost to your planting area to ensure your plants have the rich soil they prefer. If you're growing mustard greens in a container, you can mix compost with your potting soil. (Explore the steps to create your own easy cut-and-come-again salad planter to grow all the mustard greens and lettuces you can eat. Here are the best containers for salad gardening.)

How to Plant Mustard Greens

You can plant mustard greens by seed or by starter plant. Growing mustard greens from seeds is very easy, and they're fast to germinate (which is why they make excellent microgreens). Two of my favorite mustard varieties to grow from seed are Florida Broadleaf mustard greens and Purple Osaka.

Sow your mustard greens seeds directly in your garden about three to four weeks before your last frost date. If you're planting in the fall, you can begin sowing seeds once your daytime high doesn't get much higher than 75°F. Continue planting until about four weeks from your first expected frost.

Use a dibber or a chopstick to poke holes about half an inch deep for your seeds.

Space your mustard greens seeds or seedlings 3 to 5 inches apart and plant in zig zags. Mature plants can grow as wide as 24 inches, so you might need to thin plants later. The tighter you pack your leafy greens in, the more frequently you'll have to promise to harvest leaves to ensure that every plant has access to the light and air circulation it needs.

Place one seed inside each hole.

Cover your seeds with a thin layer of soil or compost, and give them a good watering in.

If you'd like a steady harvest of these spicy leaves, sow more seeds three weeks after your first planting.

How to Tend Mustard Green Plants

Once you've got your mustard greens growing, there aren't a whole lot of difficult tasks to perform—you'll mostly just be watering, protecting your leaves from pests, and pruning. Like other salad plants, mustard greens are easy to care for, which makes them great starter plants in the garden.

Water

Make sure your mustard greens plants receive at least one to two inches of water per week to keep them at their peak flavor. You'll need to hand water or install an irrigation system if rainfall in your area doesn't cover their watering needs. If they feel they're not being watered enough, their leaves can become too spicy for most people to enjoy. Check moisture in the soil regularly, and water when the top inch of soil feels dry. Focus your watering on the roots of the plant, not the leaves.

Feed

If you added compost to your soil before you sowed your seeds, you shouldn't need to give your plants much more by way of nutrients for them to produce lots of leaves for you quickly. If leaves begin to look discolored, check your watering levels and add another layer of compost or some earthworm castings for a little nutritional boost.

Protect

Mustard greens may be low-maintenance plants, but they do attract cabbage loopers, cabbageworms, slugs, and other pests.

The easiest and most effective way to protect your leafy greens from pests without spraying a whole bunch of synthetic and harmful chemicals is to use an inexpensive garden mesh. Read more about this organic pest solution here.

Add your cover as soon as you sow seeds. Seedlings are particularly vulnerable to pest pressure, and you don't want to cover once you've already spotted pests, only to trap the bugs underneath the mesh and give them an endless leaf buffet!

If you're not covering, check for pests right underneath the plant regularly. Prune any leaves that touch the soil and give pests a nice little bridge to your plants.

You'll also want to prune any leaves that look discolored or have been affected by pests. Pruning/harvesting regularly from your plants helps air flow between the leaves and prevents disease.

How to Harvest Leaves from Your Mustard Greens Plant

Most gardeners prefer to harvest mustard greens when the leaves are still young and milder in flavor. Older leaves tend to be tougher and more peppery. This plant grows rapidly, so that means you can harvest leaves 6 to 8 inches long in as little as 4 weeks.

Like with other leafy greens, you can harvest mustard greens as a cut-and-come again plant, or you can harvest all the leaves at once. If you'd like to leave your mustard green plant growing in the garden, harvest only individual leaves—the older, outermost leaves—right at their base, and leave the younger leaves to continue growing from the center for a later harvest. To harvest all of the leaves at once, you can cut the plant at the base, about 3 to 4 inches from the soil, and leave the stub to regrow. Use clean scissors or pruners.

If a plant starts bolting or looking like its time in the garden is over when you still have several months left before frost, pull it and plant new seeds.

What to Do When Mustard Greens Produce Flowers

When the temperatures rise in late spring or summer, mustard greens will bolt, or send up a flower stalk and focus on seed production. When this happens, the leaves will be past their peak flavor. You can pull the plants from your garden and plant something more heat-tolerant until it's time to sow mustard green seeds again in cooler temps...

Or you can leave the plant for a bit longer in your garden. Bees and butterflies adore the pretty yellow flowers of bolting brassicas. Plus, if you let the flowers dry on the plants, you can save your own mustard seeds!

Keeping these leafy greens well-watered and harvesting frequently can help delay flowering for as long as possible. You don't want your plants to become overgrown and think, "I don't really have a purpose here anymore. I'm just going to go to seed."

How to Enjoy Mustard Greens in the Kitchen

The entire mustard greens plant is edible—seeds, leaves, flowers, stems, and all!

Smaller leaves are ideal for eating raw and adding a little crunch to sandwiches or salads. Bigger leaves can be simmered, sautéd, braised, quick-pickled, tossed into soups, or wilted and served with something sweet to balance their spice. Mustard greens are enormously popular in Asian-inspired stir fries. If you have a recipe that calls for large leaves (like kale, collards, or Swiss chard), try using garden-fresh mustard greens as a twist. You can even add mustard greens to your blender when making pesto. There's so much you can do with these mustards.

Plus, their delicious little leaves are packed with protein, fiber, folate, manganese, calcium, and vitamins A, K, and C—plenty of good reasons to enjoy this delicious salad green as many different ways as you can. I like to harvest purple mustard alongside green leaves so that I get even more antioxidants.

Time to Grow Your Own Mustard Greens

I hope this inspires you to grow your own mustard greens. In just a few short months, you'll hopefully be harvesting baskets and baskets of your own peppery leafy greens.

Thanks for helping me bring back the kitchen garden, one leafy green at a time!