Why Grow Florida Broadleaf Mustard?
Fast-Growing Heirloom Florida Broadleaf Mustard is a classic Southern heirloom prized for its versatility, flavor, and dependable performance. This vigorous variety produces large, smooth, flat leaves that grow quickly, providing multiple harvest opportunities throughout the season. Whether you're growing fresh salad greens or hearty cooking greens, Florida Broadleaf is a reliable choice for cool-season gardens.
Versatile Greens with Benefits Beyond the Kitchen Florida Broadleaf Mustard can be harvested young for tender salads and fresh eating, or allowed to mature into large, flavorful greens that develop a milder taste when cooked. In addition to its culinary value, this variety can also be grown as a cover crop for biofumigation, helping improve soil health and suppress certain soilborne pests and diseases when incorporated into the garden. Easy to grow, productive, and multi-purpose, Florida Broadleaf Mustard is an excellent addition to any home garden.
Mustard Green Growing Tips
• When to Plant Mustard Greens
Mustard greens are considered a "cool season" vegetable that grow best in the fall and early spring months. This variety can be direct seeded or transplanted in the backyard garden. If transplanting, start seeds indoors or in a greenhouse 3-4 weeks before your intended in-ground planting date. Then space transplants 2-3" apart in your garden rows or beds.
If direct seeding into your in-ground garden or containers, make a shallow (1" deep) planting furrow and lightly sprinkle seeds along the furrow. Then lightly cover the seeds and press to ensure good seed to soil contact. For small containers, you may wish to sprinkle mustard seeds over the entire container and lightly cover with more soil.
Mustard greens can tolerate a light frost but will tend to become damaged during a heavy freeze. As a result, we recommend harvesting the leaves before a heavy freeze. The plants will often recover and grow back, but this will prevent the leaves you have from becoming damaged.
Mustard will "bolt" or go to seed when temperatures begin to warm in the spring months. Planting in the late summer for a fall crop or in the late winter for a spring crop will provide the best results.
• How to Fertilize Mustard Greens
It's always a good idea to apply some pre-plant fertilizer to the soil prior to planting mustard seeds or transplants. We like to sprinkle Coop Gro organic fertilizer on our raised beds or along our rows prior to planting. This ensures the plants have the right nutrients to put down roots in their new soil.
After each harvest, fertilize the plants with a balanced fertilizer to ensure quality repeat harvests going forward. We like to feed ours with a liquid solution of AgroThrive General Purpose or by sprinkling Coop Gro around the base of the plants and lightly mixing it into the soil.
• When to Harvest Mustard Greens
Mustard greens can be harvested whenever you'd like! Some gardeners like to harvest "baby mustard greens" as soon as the leaves are as big as their hands, while others prefer to wait until the leaves get larger.
When harvesting mustard greens, you can pluck individual leaves off the plant or cut the plants a few inches above the soil line. Be sure to leave a few inches of the base of the stems in tact so the plants can continue to grow and produce another round of leaves.
