Southern Giant Curled Mustard Seed

Bright green, deeply curled mustard leaves with a pungent bite for fresh picking and cooked greens.

Curled leaves with a mustard bite

Southern Giant Curled produces large, curled leaves with a bright green color and a slight yellow cast. The flavor has the pungent bite expected from mustard greens. Choose it when you want a stronger cooking green than a mild leafy vegetable. The crinkled leaf shape also gives the harvest a different texture from flat-leaf greens. Rinse between the folds before preparing the leaves, especially after rain has splashed soil onto the lower part of the plant.

A relatively quick greens crop

The approximate harvest time is forty days, making this mustard useful for a shorter stretch of cool-season gardening. Weather and the leaf size you prefer will change that timing. Small leaves can be gathered before the planting reaches its fullest size. Larger leaves provide more material for a pot of cooked greens. The harvest can also be prepared for freezing or canning. Plan the picking around how you intend to use it instead of waiting for every plant to look identical.

Grow during milder weather

Mustard is a cool-season crop in Florida, with fall through spring offering useful growing windows. Hot weather can make the flavor more bitter. Sow into a prepared, well-drained bed and keep the shallow seed zone evenly moist during emergence. Thin seedlings before their foliage crowds together. A broad leaf crop needs room to open its leaves, and leaving a dense stand can make harvesting awkward. Keep weeds down while the mustard is small so they do not compete with the developing plants.

Harvest leaves while they are tender

Pick outer leaves and leave the center to continue growing when you want more than one picking. Gather leaves before they become old and coarse. Check their undersides for insects or fresh feeding damage as you work along the planting. Maintain even moisture after harvest so the remaining foliage can keep growing. Mustard foliage can be damaged by freezing weather, so watch the forecast when a planting is approaching harvest. Cut only what you can use or preserve promptly, then cool the greens to retain their quality.