I’ve been having a hard time determining when and how to harvest mustard. Seems like mine goes from green, to shattered (broken, empty pods), with nothing in-between. If I follow typical internet garden advice and let it stand until its completely dry, I’m not going to have any seeds left.
To hedge my bets, I cut down about a third of my plot of mustard a few days back. It’s now drying in the sun. But from the looks of it, above, I may have been too early. That still looks awfully green.
The best description I found of what I’m supposed to be looking for, if I want to “swath” my mustard (cut it before it’s fully dry), is from North Dakota State University
Mustard should be swathed following general leaf drop when overall field color changes from green to yellow/brown and early enough to avoid shattering. To determine physiological maturity, select pods from the middle of the racemes of several plants in areas representing the average maturity of the field. Most varieties are at the optimum maturity for swathing when upper pods have turned and seeds are brown or yellow. The remaining 25% of green seeds will mature in the swath prior to harvest.
Much of that makes sense. Look for leaf drop. Got it. Look for the field turning from green to gold. Fine. Now check a bunch of pods that represent the median of what’s in your field. That is, seed pods in the middle of the stem, on plants of average maturity.
Then I lost it. I could not make head or tail out of this phrase:
” … when upper pods have turned and seeds are brown or yellow.”
But, on mine, the pods at the bottom turn brown first. Which makes sense, because those would be the first to flower. If I wait for all the upper pods to turn (from green to gold), I won’t have any seeds left. And since this description was written for the types of mustard that shatter easily, I know that’s not what it’s telling me to do.
After about my twentieth re-reading, I finally got it.
Not “upper pods” meaning the ones at the top of the plant. “Upper pods”, meaning, for the test pods, the end of the pod that attaches to the plant. That end of the median pod should be golden. It’s OK if the rest of the pod is green, as long as the seeds are fully-formed, and most (75%) are brown.
Re-written: Harvest when the median pod, on the median plant, is starting to turn golden, at the stem end of the seed pod. And when, after splitting the seed pod, most of the seeds in the pod are golden. At that stage, as long as the rest of the seeds in the pod are fully formed, they’ll turn from green to golden as the plant cures.
Below I have a seed pod that’s almost right. The upper pod — the part attached to the stem — is brown. The tip is still green. And, while you can’t see it, the first couple of seeds in the pod were, in fact, yellow. And all the seeds are fully-formed, that is, full size. That should mean that all the green seeds shown here would have gone on to ripen to gold, if I’d cut that plant down at this stage.
That’s still a bit too young, from the criteria above. I ought to see yellow seeds down most of the pod. But even at this stage, the pod was already starting to shatter (separate). So it’s possible that I have to harvest at this relatively green state, and hope for the best.
Conclusion
I think this all fits now.
If you have a mustard that doesn’t shatter, you can just wait until the whole field turns brown, and harvest it.
If you have one that shatters — where the seed pods split once they turn brown, and mine has been doing — you can’t wait that long.
Instead, you’re going to have to harvest it partly green. That inevitably means harvesting seed pods that are in a wide range of maturities.
Determining what “partly” means is the tricky part. So you pick the point at which the median seed pod in your field is just ripe enough that it will continue to ripen after you cut it. That means that the top (stem end) of that pod is brown, and most (but not all) the seeds in those median pods have already turned brown.
