THE CHINESE GREENS - Growing Chinese Vegetables in Your Own Backyard - page 14

When you harvest mizuna for the kitchen, you can fill the spot in the flower bed with
warm-weather annuals.
How to Grow
Getting started. Though it looks delicate, mizuna is ideal as an early spring green, cold
hardy and tolerant of wet soil. In Connecticut, where springs are so often chilly and wet,
it compensates for failures due to the too early, over-enthusiastic sowing of other seeds
that can't possibly germinate under these adverse conditions. If your green beans are
rotting in the ground, it's comforting to see a fine row of mizuna seedlings well on their
way.
Grow mizuna successively from early spring on, until stopped by a hard frost.
Continue sowing even after midsummer. Sometimes mizuna will survive the first snow-
fall and give you greens to gather well after the rest of the garden has given up for the
season. I've actually had mizuna green and fresh after a frost that destroyed my zinnias.
In spite of being comfortable with cold weather, mizuna — unlike lettuce — won't
go to seed in a spell of hot weather. I have grown it through a week of 90°F temperat-
ures without any ill effect except slight wilting, and that corrected itself when the tem-
peratures cooled off in the evening.
Planting. Sow seeds 2 inches apart, about ½ inch deep and in rows 18 inches apart.
Once the plants begin to crowd one another, start thinning; these young thinnings are
delicately delicious. For plants to grow to full size, keep thinning until they are about
12 inches apart. For use as a bedding plant, thin to 10 inches apart.
Growing needs. Frequent watering and applications of diluted liquid fertilizer or fish
emulsion starting three weeks after germination are all the attention this vegetable
needs. It seems remarkably free from pests and diseases.
For successive sowings, prepare the soil before seeding by digging in some compost
and fertilizer to replenish that used up by the previous crop. Don't overdo the fertilizer;
growth should be brisk but not headlong.
How to Harvest
Take a few leaves from each plant anytime starting three weeks after germination. The
major harvest should be completed in 35 to 40 days. You can take the whole plant or just
most of the leaves. Mizuna works well for cut-and-come-again harvesting, perfect for
salad mixes. Clip the entire row to within an inch of their bases after four to five weeks
for baby greens. If you fertilize as if you were reseeding, plants will regrow quickly
for a second cutting. This is easier than reseeding or transplanting seedlings, and a tre-
mendous timesaver.