Mustard greens – sharing space with a bamboo plant

I had some cute little visitors in my Chinese Bamboo pot a few days ago and now they are flourishing.

I had tried growing some mustard greens by sowing soaked mustard seeds in a shallow tray. When nothing much came out of it, I emptied the soil in the tray into the pot containing the Bamboo, and they were happily showing their green selves in a few days. They’ve grown bigger now and their leaves are looking much different, with lacy edges! I haven’t taken a pic of that yet, but here are the budding cruciferous leaves.

And a macro shot that shows you the rough texture of a young, jut broken out leaf. Even a leaf this tiny had that sharp pungent mustardy flavour, much to my surprise.

I don’t think I’ll have enough of them to make a saag, but may be I shall healthy stir fry them with some other veggies to make a nice sandwich filling seasoned with some mustard sauce. I just tasted the maturing leaves this morning, and they have a nice bitter-sweet, metallic taste to them.

Here’s some info on how to grow mustard greens in your garden. And ofcourse, their health benefits run into a long page on World’s healthiest foods. While you’re there, you can also look up the various ways to serve up these greens.