In traditional Japanese and Chinese cooking, these cabbages are lightly steamed or braised, but Americans are finding the young leaves to be ideal salad ingredients. Plant several kinds to get a mix of mild and pungent flavors. They combine well with regular lettuces, too. Here are the best to try in your garden this fall. They are ranked from mildest flavor to strongest.
Mature heads are a foot or more across.
Even though mizuna and mibuna are two separate greens, they are so similar in looks, flavor, name, and culture that we group them together here. Each forms a bushy rosette of many long and narrow leaves. Mizuna leaves are frilly, mild-flavored, and deep green. Ultimately both will make loose heads the size of a large loose leaf lettuce. The plants will regrow new leaves through several cuttings.