This post is a note to myself about what I plan to do with the mustard in my back yard.
Background
I have about 600 square feet of yellow mustard. I used it as an effective and rather pretty ground cover.
But now it’s going to seed. Which is a good thing, as I’ve decided that I’m going to harvest and use the resulting mustard seed.
But that’s a lot of plant material that has to be processed. So I need to do this efficiently.
On-line guidance is scarce, for this scale of mustard-growing. I can find advice for the commercial grower, relying on proper combines for harvesting the seed. Alternatively, I find advice that seems oriented toward those planning to harvest a few ounces of seed.
But between those two extremes, there’s not much advice. I’m going to produce a something resembling a square hay bale or two of dried mustard plants. I ought to end up somewhere around 1.5 gallons of seed when I’m done with that. And in between, that’s a lot of stuff to move around. Most processes suggested for the small-scale grower are just too inefficient at that volume of production.
Plus, a lot of the advice is not at all detailed. And some of it did not work at all for me last year, when I first tried growing mustard.
So, after some consideration, the following is this year’s tentative mustard plan, for 600 square feet of yellow mustard.
- Tie it into shocks as it matures.
- Cut it down with a hedge trimmer.
- Dry it indoors, on a bedsheet (with fan).
- Thresh it by walking on dry plants (said plants being wrapped in a bedsheet).
- Sieve it with a standard kitchen colander to remove large trash.
- Winnow using a plastic box and a blower (hair dryer without the heat).
- Grind in a bladed spice grinder.
- Can it in a standard water bath canner.
This may be the first and last time that I process this much mustard.
Mustard processing plans in detail.
Step 1: Stand the mustard upright and tie into shocks.
Right now, my mustard is in the process of falling over, losing its leaves, and maturing its seeds. I really don’t like the look of a food crop spread on the ground, so I’ve decided to stand the mustard up, like shocks of corn or sheaves of wheat, and use a bit of twine to keep the shocks upright.
Then wait for the mustard pods and seeds to turn mostly — but not entirely — brown.
One way or the other, I’m going to have to pick that mustard up off the ground in order to cut it. Might as well do it now, because that makes the next step possible.
Step 2: Cut the mustard.
Well, with what, exactly? Nobody seems to specify, as if the choice of cutting tool is obvious. It’s not.
I don’t want to use a machete or a sickle, because I don’t want to shake the plants hard, which might shatter the seed pods. I don’t particularly want to grab individual stalks and cut with secateurs or a knife or grass shears, because that’s tedious.
After pondering my options, I’m going to use an electric hedge clipper. Not just because I own one, but because this is a good tool for cutting a lot of thin stalks quickly. This should allow me to cut the mustard cleanly at uniform height, with little effort, and with minimal physical shock to the plants.
3: Cure the plants.
You should ideally cut these down before they are completely dry. Then leave them for a while to finish curing the seeds, and finish drying. Harvested at the right time, any remaining green seeds will turn yellow during this time period, typically given as “two weeks”.
The standard advice is to hang sheaves of mustard upside down, stuffed into paper bags to catch any seeds that fall as they ripen. That ain’t gonna work at this scale. Or, I’m too lazy to try to stuff that much uncooperative mustard plant into paper bags. Let alone find enough paper bags.
Instead, I’m going to lay the plants on a bedsheet, indoors, to dry, and run a fan on low to keep the air moving past them. I strongly suspect that my humid Virginia climate (Zone 7) is not conducive to curing mustard in July outdoors.
4: Thresh the plants.
Here’s where the bedsheet matters. I’m going to copy the one video that made sense to me, by Crown Hill Farm. Wrap the plants in a bedsheet and walk on them to break open the seed pods and release the seeds.
I would dearly like to comb these plants first, to separate the seed pods from the long stalks. I have yet to find or think of a device that would plausibly allow me to do that. The pods really aren’t much larger in diameter than the stalks, which makes them hard to separate from the stalks mechanically. And I’m not going to pull the pods off the stalks by hand.
The typical advice seems to be that after two weeks, the pods will open themselves. I surely did not find that to be true last year. Other advice is to strip and open the pods by hand. That’s not going to happen, with this much mustard.
So I’m going to thresh an old-fashioned way, by walking on the dried whole plants. If I could find something to act as a heavy roller, I’d try substituting that for walking on it. But as if now, the plan is to stomp my seeds to freedom.
I have no Plan B for this step, if it doesn’t work.
5: Sieve the seeds/plant mixture …
… to remove the coarsest bits of plant. Looks like an ordinary colander should do. Might use some eighth-inch-mesh screening, just because I already own some.
6: Winnow the seeds: Box and blower.
I’m going to start off by doing the simplest thing imaginable. I’m going to put the seed/trash mixture in a big plastic tote, and blow air through it using a heat gun with the heat function turned off. (Basically, a hair dryer with no heat).
There are better ways to winnow mustard seed, for sure. The problem is that well-designed the devices that plausibly will do this well require some effort to construct. And then I’d have that device sitting in my garage ever after.
If this box-and-blower approach doesn’t work to my satisfaction, I will go to the effort to build a proper winnowing machine.
7: Grind the mustard.
For long-term storage, most of this will remain as seed, until needed. But in order to make mustard, I have to grind some of it. I haven’t really found an ideal way to do this. I’d like to reduce the seeds to powder. But no mechanical method I can lay hands on will grind that fine.
Some people say to grind the seeds with mortar and pestle. With a gallon and a half of seed, that’s not going to happen. Plus, I don’t own one.
Others say to soak the seed, then run the resulting softened seed mix through a food processor. That’s plausible, but that’s often followed with the advice to strain the result to remove large particles. So I know that doesn’t produce the equivalent of mustard powder.
I see that some people recommend using a blender or stick blender. Others say no, because the seeds just bounce around. In either case, I’d guess that you would once again want to filter out the coarser particles.
I also see the advice that I could use a spice grinder or coffee grinder to do this. But because mustard is, technically, an oil seed, I’m a little hesitant to do that. But lots of people say it’s fine to grind mustard in (e.g.) a coffee grinder.
Finally, you can in theory grind mustard seed in a standard pepper mill.
Of those options, I think I’m going to try using a simple bladed spice/coffee grinder. Not the expensive burr kind, but the type that’s like a miniature blender, with a rapidly-spinning blade that chops up whatever’s in the grinder. On Amazon, those are the only “coffee grinders” that they sell, marketed as capable of grinding spice. And I already own at least one of those. And if I mess it up with mustard, they’re cheap.
That said, what I really want is something to grind these to the consistency of flour, and none of these mechanical methods will do that. Plausibly, I might be able to sift the mustard through a very fine screen to get some component that consists of powder-sized particles.
8: Make and can the mustard.
The high vinegar content means that the resulting mustard is a high-acid food, and can safely be canned in a standard water-bath canner. Apparently, fresh mustard is very hot. The longer it sits, the more it cooks, the milder it gets. Plausibly, canning the mustard this way will not only preserve it, but will result in a less hot product.
