Mizuna is one of the most useful and fastest-growing salad plants, growing virtually anywhere, anytime, tolerating heat, cold and wet soils. Anything except dry.
New Zealand gardener and cook Mary Browne recommends growing mizuna for a continuous supply of delectable greens. The feathery leaves are a good lettuce substitute, or a crisp, tender adjunct to whatever salad ingredients are available. The flavour is mild, the texture juicy and crunchy. The dark, chorophyll-laden leaves contain minerals, beta-carotene, vitamin C, folate and iron.
Mizuna is both heat and cold-tolerant. Even when sown in spring, it is one of the most bolt-resistant of the oriental brassicas. In summer, the bushy clumps of glossy green, feathery leaves are surprisingly decorative interspersed among brightly-coloured annuals in a flower bed, as an edging, or dotted among other veges and herbs.
Mizuna prefers temperatures between 8-18˚C, making it ideal for growing in winter in an unheated greenhouse. It seems very tolerant of low light levels, growing longer than most vegetables.
Greenhouse sowings can be made in late autumn and early winter and eaten when young and tender or left to be a productive winter heading crop. Another sowing in late winter in containers can provide plants for planting outdoors in early spring.
In addition, seeds can be direct sown from spring through to autumn. Plants can be grown as fast baby-leaf crops for a quick one-off harvest, as a cut-and-come-again crop, or as mature plants for frequent leaf picking. We combine all three methods.
