The Mustard Family

The mustard family of plants contains quite a few tasty veggies: cabbage, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, turnips, radishes, and of course mustard. The family also contains many flowers and weedy plants, few of which I would suspect of being edible – but in fact, they all are!



This is Dame’s Rocket, a pesky-but-beautiful non-native member of the family that has earned itself a place on the Massachusetts Prohibited Plant list. I gave it a taste, and it wasn’t bad, except that the leaves were furry. I would have to be starving to eat a salad made up of furry greens.

Here is another nuisance mustard-family member introduced by gardeners: Yellow rocket, Barbarea vulgaris. Unfortunately I forgot to taste this one before killing it.



This is a weed that I deliberately planted, because it is a native plant, and I am curious about it: Tower mustard, Arabis glabra. (Thanks Marna!)





I love that the unopened buds look like broccoli buds.

After watching my tower mustards bolt, I’m not sure that I find them to be interesting enough to plant in a garden, and the leaves are too small to bother harvesting as edibles. But I may let them go to seed just to grow them in the “lawn”.

Speaking of the mustard family, check out what our friend Hero grew!