Purple Frills: discover its flavour and how to grow it

Why grow Purple Frills?

Purple Frills combines strongly divided leaves with deep purple colour. A small amount therefore stands out in a bowl.

Choose Purple Frills when leaf colour and fine structure both matter. It is an accent crop, not heading lettuce.

How this choice tastes

The product source describes pungent leaves. Purple colour does not indicate more or less heat than Golden Frills.

From harvest to kitchen

Add individual young leaves to salad. Larger leaves can be fried briefly and paired with milder vegetables.

What needs attention when growing

Sow for a cool growing window and avoid a drying container. Allow spacing between plants left to grow longer.

Cut young leaves for raw use. With later pickings, test a small amount for desired heat and texture first.

A pungent leafy vegetable

Mustard greens here means Brassica juncea, with selections such as Golden Frills and Purple Frills. Leaf shape and colour offer an initial guide; pungency belongs to the crop and the described offering. Expect loose leaves with their own markings. This is a different choice from sowing yellow mustard for ground cover or growing mustard cress on a tray.

Making use of a cool period

The producer describes Golden Frills as particularly suited to cool growing conditions. A sunny leaf bed or container can serve this purpose. Warm summer growing makes bolting more likely. Place different leaf colours side by side for comparison, but keep cultivar labels visible. Without labels, a beautiful colour mix is difficult to trace back to a seed choice later.

First choose between baby leaves and a full plant

Dense sowing produces young cutting leaves; wider thinning gives individual plants room to grow on. Choose one of these aims for the first trial. Sow thinly and keep the surface moist. Follow the packet for the chosen cultivar and system, because a cutting row and a full-sized plant need different spacing.

An accessible salad container

Prepare a level, well-drained bed or use a planter that lets water escape. Label each sowing separately and leave part of the edge clear for watering. This is especially useful for finely divided foliage: you will not need to keep reaching through the plants to get to the soil.

Observe development and feeding damage

Check young leaves regularly and watch for a flower stalk. Delay the next sowing or move it to a cooler season if the crop bolts very quickly. In a container, remember the difference between dry compost and warm air: extra watering alone does not automatically change an unsuitable growing time.

Leaf bed or salad container

In a cool bed, you can compare short rows of different selections. A salad container makes small, fresh portions easy to reach. Use that proximity to your advantage: taste at different ages and record when the pungency is pleasant. A container does not require a new cultivar; the same selection can be followed in both growing systems.

Pick a little and reassess

Take young leaves for a first harvest and leave enough plant if you want to observe further development. For a cutting crop, a small test cut is useful before harvesting everything. Lay young and older leaves out separately. This lets you see the effect of harvest stage without inventing an unproven flavour difference between cultivars.

Using pungency in moderation

Add a small amount of mustard greens to a salad or cook briefly in a hot dish. Combine a first portion with mild leaves so the mustard note does not dominate. Golden Frills has fine green leaves; Purple Frills adds purple colour. Colour choice and the desired amount of heat are two separate decisions.