How to Grow Minutina in Australia

Minutina (Plantago coronopus) is a small salad plant of the plantain family, Plantaginaceae, also sold as buck's horn plantain or erba stella. It is grown as a cool-season annual for rosettes of narrow, toothed leaves with a crunchy bite and a mild, nutty flavour. Its flower buds are edible too. It shrugs off frost and salty, sandy soil, so it keeps a salad bed going through winter. The one thing most gardeners get wrong is timing: sown into warm weather, it runs to flower before it makes many leaves.

Three mistakes that matter

1. Sowing into late spring warmth. Lengthening days and rising heat push minutina into flower, and a flowering plant makes fewer good leaves. Sow from autumn to early spring instead, or from late summer to spring in cool gardens, following the windows in When to plant.
2. Letting the bed swing between dry and soggy. Dry soil makes the leaves wilt and toughen, while waterlogged soil rots the crown. Keep the soil evenly moist under mulch, in a bed that drains freely.
3. Picking leaves too late. The leaves are at their best young and tender, so a crop left standing loses its crunch. Start cutting young, at the size given in Harvesting Leaves, and keep cutting often so fresh leaves keep coming.

When to plant

Minutina germinates best in soil of 12°C to 20°C, so sow as autumn cools the soil. Anzac Day sits in the middle of the main sowing window in temperate and Mediterranean gardens, and at its end in cool ones. Sow a short row every two to four weeks for a steady supply, because older plants lose vigour.

At the warm end of a window, sow where plants get afternoon shade and expect them to flower sooner. In frosty gardens, plants survive winter but grow slowly in the coldest weeks, so get the main crop in early in autumn.

Site, soil and setup

In the wild, minutina grows on sandy and rocky coasts, so it copes with wind, salt spray and poor soil. Garden plants still give larger, juicier leaves in moist, fertile ground.

Container growing

Allow a pot about 15 cm across, holding roughly 2 L of mix, for each plant. Or sow a trough and thin to 10 cm apart. Fill it with quality potting mix. The store sells one minutina, an heirloom that stays small, at about 25 cm.

• Water: keep the mix evenly moist, and never leave the pot standing in water. See watering seeds and seedlings for the early weeks.
• Feed: seaweed solution at half strength every fortnight once true leaves form, then fish emulsion at half strength every fortnight once picking starts.
• Position: full sun in autumn and winter; move the pot into afternoon shade as spring warms.

Sowing Seeds

Sow minutina direct where it is to grow, or raise it in trays and plant out the seedlings.

Sowing direct

• Water the prepared bed the day before sowing.
• Sow the tiny seed thinly, 2 to 6 mm deep, in rows 30 cm apart. Sowing tiny seeds shows how to spread it evenly.
• Keep the surface damp until seedlings show, usually in 7 to 14 days.
• Thin the seedlings to 10 to 15 cm apart, and eat the thinnings.
• For a block of salad leaves, leave plants closer: crowding pushes the leaves upright and keeps them clean.

Starting under cover

• Sow two or three seeds per cell into moist seed raising mix, just covered with a sprinkle of mix.
• Snip out all but the strongest seedling in each cell.
• Harden off the seedlings (get them used to outdoor sun and wind a little more each day), following hardening off seedlings.
• Plant out at 5 to 10 cm tall, at the same spacing as direct sowings.
• Seed raising mix can carry Legionella bacteria, so dampen it first, wear gloves and a P2 mask, and wash your hands afterwards.

Care by growth stage

Steady moisture decides this crop: plants that never dry out keep making soft, crisp leaves.

Minutina is a light feeder, and compost-rich soil carries it most of the way. If growth stalls in poor soil, a light dose of all-purpose controlled release granular (NPK around 14-5-10) scratched into the surface can help.

Pinching and Harvesting

Every cut takes leaves from the outside or the top, and the growing point at the base makes new ones. A plant left alone flowers, sets seed and self-sows freely.

• Cut above the base: take the whole rosette with scissors a little above the soil, leaving the centre intact to regrow.
• Or pick the outside: snap off the outer leaves and leave the youngest in the middle.
• Tidy up: remove yellowing or dead leaves so they do not rot among the healthy ones.
• Take the flower stalks: snip them as they rise, and eat the closed buds.
• Replace tired plants: once regrowth slows, pull the plants and resow.

Companion planting

A low rosette that likes cool, moist soil sits well among other small winter salad crops.

Grows well with

• Corn salad, another low winter salad that wants the same moist soil and frequent cutting.
• Lettuce, sown in the same cool months and picked on the same rhythm.
• Rocket, a quick cool-season leaf that shares the bed without crowding a flat rosette.

Keep apart

• Kale on the north side of the bed, whose tall leaves shade low rosettes when the winter sun sits low.

Harvesting Leaves

Picking usually starts about seven weeks after sowing, once the leaves reach 12 to 15 cm long and are still soft.

• Take outer leaves or the whole rosette, as described in Pinching and Harvesting, and come back as plants regrow.
• Wash the leaves well.

Wrap unwashed leaves in paper towel, seal them in a plastic bag in the fridge, and use them within 3 to 4 days.

Toss the leaves raw through salads, or wilt them briefly in a hot pan, since longer cooking turns them slippery. Older leaves soften if blanched in boiling water for a few seconds.

Common problems

No seedlings after two weeks. Warm soil or deep seed often stops germination, so check the temperature in When to plant and the depth in Sowing Seeds. Read more

Gritty, muddy leaves. Widely spaced plants lie flat against the soil, and rain splashes grit into them. Sow closer together and mulch around the rosettes.

Growth stops in midwinter. Plants slow right down in the coldest weeks, even though frost rarely harms them, and pick up again as days lengthen. Read more

Plants flower within weeks. Late sowings meet warmth and long days, so the plants flower young, as Three mistakes that matter explains. Take the stalks and resow in autumn.

Pests and diseases

Minutina has few pests, but snails and slugs find the tender leaves quickly.

Slugs and snails (Gastropoda). They chew ragged holes and whole seedlings, mostly on damp nights after rain. Hunt with a torch about two hours after sunset. Rely on hunting more than barriers, since a garden trial found copper tape did not cut damage. Read more

Aphids (Aphidoidea). These small sap-suckers sometimes cluster under the leaves, leaving sticky honeydew that draws ants and sooty mould. If you find them, squash them or knock them off with a jet of water, and let ladybirds and hoverflies do the rest. Read more

Damping off (Pythium and Rhizoctonia species). Seedlings rot at soil level and fall over, or fail to come up, most often in thick sowings kept wet. Sow thinly into free-draining mix and never overwater. Read more

Prevention first

• Use fresh seed raising mix and clean trays for every sowing.
• Water in the morning so the surface dries before snails come out at night.
• Check under the leaves for aphid clusters whenever you pick.
• Clear stacked pots and boards from around the bed, where snails hide by day.

Tips

1. In coastal gardens, grow minutina where salt spray and sandy soil defeat lettuce.
2. Buck's horn plantain is naturalised across southern Australia and is an environmental weed in Victoria and Western Australia. Cut the flower spikes before seed ripens, and never let it seed near bushland.
3. Seed sold as Plantain is a different plant, Plantago major or Plantago lanceolata. For minutina, look for Plantago coronopus on the packet.