I adore mustard. Hot English on grilled meat, dijon in dressings, wholegrain on sandwiches (or anything really). I use mustard seed in pickling and mustard powder in many dishes, from bolognese to curry paste.
Unbelievably, I have found lately that I have an excess of room in my side garden bed (bed E). This bed gets only morning sun, and recently I pulled out a bunch of things that haven’t thrived in this year’s lack of sunshine. This led to me pondering what I wanted to plant there – it needs to be quick growing because I’m running out of time before the winter crops need to go in.
I’ve had a lot of luck growing coriander for seed, so I thought I’d try growing mustard for seed too.
Now here’s the experimental part. I only have organic mustard seed in the kitchen, and no seed purchased for planting. But since when have I been hampered by convention? J and I took out the mustard seed from the kitchen and liberally sprinked it in the bed. We then covered it with seed raising mix and watered it in.
Now my plan is that the seed will germinate and the mustard plants will bolt to seed within 60 days or so (being mid-summer). I will then be able to use the seed for powder and for fermenting into wholegrain mustard.
On the other hand it is quite likely that it won’t even germinate, but I’m thinking positive.
I’ll keep you updated on my progress.
500m2 in Sydney 
It’ll grow. I’m growing chickpeas from organic chickpeas bought at Ceres, and I’m also growing peas from whole dried peas bought at the supermarket.
Have fun!
Wow – never thought of planting chickpeas. I checked the mustard seeds this afternoon after work, and they have indeed germinated!
I doubt you’ll have any trouble getting it to germinate and then you’ll have oodles. You should be able to use the leaves as well.
It’s growing! Now I think I’ve sown it too densely, but oh well, you live, you learn 🙂
I told Albert that he wouldn’t grow much good from the insides of supermarket tomatoes and he grew a great crop of tomato plants (I was told the tomatoes tasted fantastic). I dare say the mustard will grow, but obviously I don’t always know what I’m talking about…
I’m keen to see how this one goes though because we quite like mustard here too. A day spent at your place has Albert quite interested in edible gardens. He’s been almost obsessive with the watering of our new sprouts!
Go Albert!
I too think it will grow. I will be interested to see how many seeds you get – I have been toying with growing mustard for seed but haven’t done anything about it yet. Incidently I think it can self seed prolifically and become a bit weedish so you may want to bag the flower heads once they appear.
Thanks for the tip Liz. I’ll be sure to bag the heads. Around that side of the house I already have parsley going mental with self-seeding. I made a whole batch of tabouleh on the weekend from a bunch I plucked out of a crack in the path!
Them’s weeds I can handle 🙂
I let a few of my mustard greens go to seed a few ywears ago and now mustard grows like a weed in our garden. I can’t believe I hvn’t thought of saving seeds for using in the kitchen. I’ll definately give it a go this year. Thanks for the idea 🙂
No problem Tricia. I have never even tried mustard greens, so that will be a first for me.
I grew mustard from supermarket seed and made seeded mustard last year. When you get some seed, here’s a recipe to try. I planted mine in Autumn and grew it through winter to avoid cabbage moths attacking it, and coz I wanted a big plant with lots of seed rather than a bolter. But two or three winter grown plants are enough to make half a dozen bottles of seeded mustard. I gave a couple away and still have plenty for us for the year. They can self seed but mine have never gone weed-like. A few around the garden for a bit of young leaf in stir fries are good, and the chooks love them.
And based on that, I just grabbed some sunflower seeds out of the fruit and nut mix and already have little seedlings. Everything wants a chance to grow, although I never thought of mustard.
If you have a sultana tree spring up, can I get a cutting ? ;P