… you get 100,000 souls per pound.
Intellectually, you probably know that the New Testament uses “mustard seed” to symbolize “tiny”. That always struck me as a bit weird, as there are certainly smaller seeds around. Sesame seeds, for one, were certainly available in the Middle East of that era. Turns out, if certain biblical scholars are to be believed, this was a common idiomatic expression of the time. People would say “mustard seed” to mean smallest conceivable quantity of something.
Practically, if you really want to grasp how small a mustard seed is, try using up a pound of it in your backyard garden.
I bought about a pound of mustard seed at the start of the pandemic in 2020. I’m sure I looked at the prices and figured out I could get a pound for not much more than the price of a little packet. So a pound it was.
I did not realize just how much mustard I had bought. Shown above, a good portion of that bag of seed is still with me, three years later. Sowing my entire back lot line (pictured at top of posting, about 10′ x 40′), 400 square feet requires just two ounces of mustard seed.
Having now planted and grown mustard for a few years, I have learned to respect it. Or fear it, depending on the circumstances.
First bees love it and deer hate it. So this has become my go-to “deer proof” flowering ground cover.
Second, it’s a great ground cover that obliterates weeds. In part, that’s because it’s fast-growing and shades out slower-growing plants. But mainly, that’s because it’s allelopathic — it literally kills a wide variety of plants using the chemicals it produces. Apparently it’s quite good at driving all kinds of pests out of the soil, particularly nematodes.
The downside is that you can’t sow mustard with other flowers. In my experience, it doesn’t much matter what else you sow in the area. If you’re sowing mustard, and other stuff, what you end up with is a bed of mustard.
Third, it’s drought-hardy. This looks like a wimpy little wildflower. But in reality, it sends down a deep taproot. This not only allows it to weather dry spells, it also presumably allows it to pull nutrients up out of the subsoil. The upshot is that once it gets established, you don’t have to worry about watering it.
Above: Overwintered mustard circa 4/1/2021
Fourth, it overwinters nicely here in Zone 7. It’s a brassica — same family as cabbage and kale. And, like kale, it’ll survive through a typical Northern Virginia winter. I found this out by accident, by sowing some too late in the summer. It didn’t bloom that year, but the plants survived and it was in full bloom as of April 1 the next year. The upshot is that you can plant it any time you want, spring through fall, and it will serve as a ground cover and will eventually get around to flowering, almost no matter what.
Finally, you can, in theory, make mustard out of it (above). My first attempt was so full of plant debris and discolored seeds that I tossed it (Post G21-4). All I learned, for sure, is that it’s nowhere as easy as most internet sites would have you believe. Pick it too soon, and you have unripe mustard. Pick it too late, the the fragile seed pods shatter before you can beat the seeds out of them. In either case, you have to winnow the results repeatedly to get down to something that’s just seeds, and nothing else.
I never did figure it out. I certainly didn’t get something that looked good enough to grind up and eat.
(I will grudgingly mention that you can, in theory, eat the mustard greens themselves. At least, I’ve heard that said. As my wife is fond of saying, in times of famine, that might be a source of food.)
A lot of websites mention problems with mustard that I have never encountered. Some people say that if you let it go to seed, it will become an invasive weed. I always let mine go to seed, and I’ve never had that problem. No idea why. And some say that, because it’s a brassica, it can become infested with cabbage worms (larvae of the European cabbage month). I certainly have those obnoxious white cabbage moths every year, but I’ve never noticed a problem with my mustard.
In short, common yellow mustard has become my go-to ground cover. The seed is cheap. You can plant it at any time. Once established, it requires no care. It’s effective at suppressing weeds. By reputation, it improves the soil. Deer won’t eat it. It looks pretty when it flowers.
And, in theory, you can make a condiment out of it. Though I have yet to figure that part out.
