Plant · P-291

Mizuna

Brassica rapa subsp. nipposinica

Mizuna is a Japanese mustard green bred to resist bolting better than nearly any other Asian green, staying in cut-and-come-again production for up to ten months off a single sowing. Even once it finally bolts, the flowering stems cook like a sweet broccoli, so the plant gives a second harvest instead of going to waste. It has shallow, fibrous roots and no storage reserve, so a single missed week of water in a warm dry spring can ruin the leaf before the plant itself even wilts. Left to bolt, it self-sows freely, though seed saved from a bed growing more than one Brassica rapa crop at once will not come true, since they cross readily with each other.