Not only does the Chinese mustard have certain preferences regarding how much water it receives, but it also cares deeply about how you provide that water. In fact, if you don't use the proper watering technique, you risk harming your tomatoes. The best way to water Chinese mustard is to apply the water directly to the soil in a slow and gentle manner. You should not pour all of the water into the soil at once, and you should not do overhead watering for your Chinese mustard. Although you should water slowly, you should also water deeply to ensure that all of the soil in which your Chinese mustard grows is sufficiently moist.

If you find that you have overwatered your Chinese mustard and you are concerned about the associated risk of disease, you should intervene immediately. Often the best approach for an overwatered Chinese mustard is to uproot it from its current growing location. Once the plant is out of the ground, you can allow its roots to dry a bit before planting it in a new growing location. Ensure that the new growing location has soil with good drainage. If you grow in pots, you may also want to move your plant to a pot with more or larger drainage holes. In the case of underwatering, all you will need to do is increase the frequency with which you supply water to your plant.

Overall, Chinese mustard requires a significant amount of water throughout the growing season. To meet that high water need, you'll need to water early and often throughout the spring and summer. During the earlier parts of the growing season, you should water your Chinese mustard about once or twice per week. As the season progresses, you should increase your watering frequency. You may need to water it twice per day or more during summer, depending on the weather. After your Chinese mustard have gone through their major seasonal growth phases, you can reduce the frequency of your watering to about once per week until the end of the growing season.

Since Chinese mustard are incredibly popular, with many professional and amateur gardeners growing them successfully, we have a pretty clear idea of how to care for these plants. That understanding includes specific knowledge about the precise volume of water an average Chinese mustard should receive. Generally, Chinese mustard will require about 1 - 1.5 inches of water per week. That volume should be dispersed evenly through your weekly watering. As the weather gets warmer, you may need to supply more water, but in most cases, two inches per week is a good baseline amount.

Underwatering and overwatering can both occur as problems for your Chinese mustard, and both these problems can manifest with similar symptoms. For example, foliage discoloration and wilting can both result from either overwatering or underwatering. When your Chinese mustard is underwatered, its leaves will be curling and drooping at the beginning. You will see a bunch of leaves turn less vigorous. Underwatering is also likely to cause stunted growth and poor overall development as both the flowers and this plant require a high amount of water. Overwatering is more likely to lead to disease, including rot. Overwatering may also lead to unpleasant smells rising from your plant's soil. The symptoms of underwatering will show up quicker than overwatering. Overwatering can also be evident in soil conditions. Mainly, if you notice a lot of standing water or waterlogged soils, overwatering is likely to occur.

As alluded to above, your Chinese mustard's water needs will repeatedly change throughout the seasons. During most of spring and summer, you should water your Chinese mustard about once every week. As the heat of summer arrives, you should plan to increase your watering frequency to once or twice per day. In the late summer and fall, towards the end of the harvest period, you can reduce your watering frequency to about once per week. After harvest has ended, you can cease watering as your Chinese mustard has reached the end of its life cycle and will require no further soil moisture. The maintenance schedule of Chinese mustard will require you to alter the amount of water you provide depending on the plant's current growth stage. Early on, especially if you grow your Chinese mustard from seeds, you'll need to provide water often enough to maintain consistent soil moisture, which encourages root development. When the plant becomes old enough to produce flowers, it will likely need even more water. During the fruit development growth stage, your Chinese mustard will likely need the most water out of any growth period, at times requiring water more than twice per day. Following that phase, the water needs of Chinese mustard will decline significantly.

Whether you grow Chinese mustard indoors or outdoors can also play a role in how you water them. Chinese mustard that grows outdoors may receive water from natural rainfall, which will reduce the amount of supplemental water you should supply. However, it is incredibly rare for rainfall to adequately replace your watering entirely. Plants that grow indoors, along with any Chinese mustard that grows in a container, will need to be watered more frequently than those that grow in the ground outdoors. If you choose this route, please make sure that the plant gets enough water by checking the soil moisture within your pot often to keep your Chinese mustard healthy.

Chinese mustard is a kind of annual plant so it doesn't need much pruning. You only need to cut off and clean the diseased, yellow or dropped leaves and stems during its growing period. This will help your Chinese mustard to stay away from pathogens infection.

During the growth of the plant, yellowing, drying and spotted leaves are produced, and these spotted and discolored leaves need to be trimmed off. If the whole piece of leave is discolored or infected, you will need to cut it off completely. In other situations, you will only need to cut off the discolored or infected part on certain leaves. Chinese mustard above the ground will die and dry up in the winter, and the dead plants need to be cleaned up.

Chinese mustard leaves are delicate, so take care not to score or bruise them. Unless the leaves are withered or heavily discolored, do not prune the leaves from the lowermost branches unless they’re damaged. They typically grow the largest, so they supply the plant with critical energy to keep it growing right. Please prevent the wounds from water after pruning until they are fully recovered. Remember always sterilize the tools before pruning. When the pruning is finished, please throw all the waste leaves and stems into the trashbins to avoid diseases and bugs.

Sterilize all the tools before pruning; unclean tools will pass pathogens to the plant through wounds; Prune on sunny days because the new cuts will be infected by pathogens if they're distained by rain or water. Throw all the waste leaves and stems into trashbins, they will easily rot and attract diseases and bugs

Expect to prune your Chinese mustard every week if it’s growing well or every two weeks if it grows slowly. It is always good to prune it on sunny days because if you prune it on rainy days, the rainwater will distain the cuts and cause the whole plant to be infected.

Because Chinese mustard is an annual plant, the pruning should take place basically during the seasons that the plant grows rapidly. During the growth of the plant, yellowing, drying and spotted leaves are produced, and these spotted and discolored leaves need to be trimmed off.

Exact needs vary, but a minimum of 6 to 8 hours per day is a good rule of thumb for Chinese mustard to grow and produce fruit.

Chinese mustard requires full sun, meaning that it should be grown in a location that gets direct sunlight that isn’t blocked by obstacles such as trees, fences, or buildings. In general, the faster the plant grows, the more hours of sunlight it will need. Morning sun is best for photosynthesis.

Chinese mustard should not need to be protected from the sun in most climates. Those who live in a desert or near the equator may find that the sun is too harsh for the types of plants they want to grow, but this is the exception.

All plants need sunlight to convert into energy. Plants that have a short growing season need even more light and energy than those that grow slowly, as they need to complete all their processes to grow and produce fruit within just a few months. The first symptoms of insufficient sunlight in Chinese mustard are pale and yellow leaves that are not able to generate enough chlorophyll to keep their healthy green color. The leaves may eventually fall off, and new growth is small and weak. The plant may become leggy and sparse as it stretches toward the available light. Finally, without enough light the plant will not be able to produce large, high-quality edible leaves or fruit. Chinese mustard needs to devote a lot of energy into growing leaves and fruits, so if there isn’t enough light available for it to convert, the harvest will suffer.

Chinese mustard can get sunburned from intense sunlight, especially when coupled with high temperatures and not having enough water. Afternoon sun tends to be most likely to burn plants. Scalded leaves develop faded patches of light brown to white on the areas at the top of the plant that are exposed to the most sun. They are especially vulnerable to this right after being transplanted from a shadier location to being in full sun. Transitioning plants gradually or providing them with a barrier while they are adjusting can help prevent sunscald in young plants. In many cases, Chinese mustard develops leaves that are large enough to protect fruits from the strongest rays of the sun. However, if intense sunlight is in contact with fruits, they can also be damaged. Avoid over-pruning those protective leaves so that the fruits don’t get burned.

Chinese mustard may become unbalanced if it gets significantly more light on one side than the other. Ideally, you can plant your Chinese mustard in a location away from obstacles that might block light, and where the distribution of sunlight is even on all sides. Be careful about planting tall species next to those that grow closer to the ground. It may not be obvious when the crops are first planted, but over time the taller plants may begin to block the amount of sunlight that can reach the shorter plants. Morning sun helps to dry dew and precipitation, which helps prevent infection from diseases that can develop when water sits on the plant. If you are watering or irrigating your Chinese mustard, this should be done in the morning.

There is an ideal temperature range that makes Chinese mustard feel at home. Under these temperature conditions, it's unlikely that you’ll have any issues with cold or hot damage to the foliage, but changing leaf colors can absolutely be a sign that Chinese mustard isn’t happy. Try to keep your Chinese mustard well within its preferred range of 70-85℉(21-30℃), but don’t panic if the temperature creeps up past 85℉(30℃) during the day or down to 70℉(21℃) at night.

If your Chinese mustard happens to be planted outside, then there’s not much you can do to try to move it indoors. However, you can certainly provide cover in ways that will help it survive any extreme temperatures that may arise unexpectedly. For instance, you can always use a few stakes and some cloth to put together a shade tent that will block out much of the sun’s intense heat from direct sunlight exposure. Similarly, Chinese mustard can be protected from the extreme cold and especially chilly winds by building a small greenhouse around the plant, which will create a greenhouse effect and warm the plant up. This can be done using garden stakes and any sort of clear or translucent plastic you may have around; if you have greenhouse plastic such as polycarbonate laying around, this works perfectly. Remove the greenhouse once temperatures warm up to 40℉(10℃) at night.

Generally speaking, Chinese mustard needs to stay within its preferred temperature range all year long. However, that doesn’t mean that care should stay the same all year long. During the warmest months of the year, Chinese mustard will need a little extra shade and a bit more of a breeze to help it cope with the hottest days. On the other hand, it may need to be moved away from chilly windows and doors during the cooler months in climates where temperatures drop below 40℉(10℃) at any point in the year.

Keeping your Chinese mustard at the right temperature can be fairly simple. Depending on where you grow it, Chinese mustard can be fairly easy to accommodate. For indoor growing, you can easily move the plant to different locations within your indoor space that best meet its temperature requirements. Avoid placing it near air conditioning vents, heaters, doors that open frequently, or drafty windows. It is a little more difficult to control the temperature around your Chinese mustard if it’s grown outside. Of course, if it’s planted in a pot, you can simply bring it indoors when the temperatures outside get too hot or too cold for Chinese mustard, but otherwise, you may need to take different measures to protect it from extreme heat or cold that may damage it irreversibly. Try placing Chinese mustard under cover to protect from both the harsh sun that can overheat it and any cold wind that could be potentially deadly for your plant.

While all plants require certain essential nutrients to develop properly, Chinese mustard has particular needs because it is grown specifically for its edible leaves. Each of the main nutrients that plants use (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) contribute to one or more of a plant’s essential functions, and in the case of foliage it is nitrogen that provides the most support. It can be difficult for a Chinese mustard to get enough nitrogen from the soil to develop a satisfying harvest, which is why many gardeners prefer to supplement by feeding Chinese mustard heavily with a source of nitrogen.

There are several points during the growing season that you should apply fertilizer to benefit your Chinese mustard. The initial application occurs when you prepare the ground to be planted, at least 2 to 8 weeks before planting, amend the soil thoroughly with nutrient-rich organic material such as compost or manure. Amend the soil again at planting time, using the same method. After your seedlings emerge, wait until they reach around 2 inches tall before applying the next dose of fertilizer. After that, you can continue to regularly feed your Chinese mustard with rich organic matter or a commercial fertilizer until you harvest. A typical schedule would be to fertilize every two to three weeks. It is also a good idea to add a layer of compost or manure around the plant to provide a continuous supply of nutrients.

Remember that nitrogen-rich fertilizers are best for growing a lot of healthy foliage, so be careful about applying this near other vegetable plants that need to focus their energy on fruiting instead of foliage. You could end up with a vegetable plant that produces lots of leaves but very few vegetables. Avoid letting any type of fertilizer touch or splash onto the leaves of your Chinese mustard, since this will burn them. It is a good idea to apply it at least a couple of inches away from the base of the plant. If your Chinese mustard is unhealthy due to disease, pests, drought, or other reasons, it should not be fertilized until those other issues are resolved. Fertilizer can give a boost to otherwise healthy plants, but it can actually cause damage if applied while the plant is not in good condition.

There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to the best type of fertilizer for Chinese mustard, since the right depends on the specific type of plant being grown, the environmental conditions, and most importantly the composition of the soil. However, as Chinese mustard requires a lot of nitrogen, it is generally a safe bet to use high-nitrogen fertilizers. Manure or compost is the best choice for amending soil at the beginning of the growing season, and then feeding for the rest of the season can be done with a dry or liquid fertilizer. Feed lightly during the seedling stage, then steadily increase as the plant matures. Many people find that vegetables grown with organic fertilizers have a superior taste to those grown with chemical fertilizers, but both will work. Some popular high-nitrogen organic options include fish emulsion, soil meal, compost tea, alfalfa meal, blood meal, and chicken manure. When using chemical fertilizers, check the NPK number which indicates the relative proportion of the three macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the mixture. Since you want a high-nitrogen option, choose one where the first number is highest such as a 13-2-5, or even one that only contains nitrogen like a 16-0-0.

There are several ways to fertilize your Chinese mustard, depending on the type of fertilizer. For amending soil, the method is to dig at least 6 inches (and preferably deeper) into the soil and then incorporate your amendment at a 2:1 ratio of soil to amendment material. Mix them together well. Granular or powder fertilizers should be spread around the base of the plant in the amount recommended by the retailer. It is a good idea to mix this material into the top layer of soil to prevent it from washing or blowing away. Apply fertilizer about 2 to 3 inches away from the plant to avoid fertilizer burn. Always water thoroughly immediately after adding a dry fertilizer to soil. Water soluble chemical fertilizers can be dissolved into water and then that diluted fertilizer mix is used to water plants. This method will only be suitable if you water your Chinese mustard from a container and not by irrigation or other methods.

Nitrogen in particular can cause fertilizer burn so using high-nitrogen fertilizer does carry some risks. Over-fertilizing results in stunted growth, outer outer leaves turning yellow, and possibly wilting. Since Chinese mustard grows fast and is harvested within just a few months of planting, it may not be worthwhile to try to save an over-fertilized patch of garden. Instead, start over with new seeds in another part of the garden and consider it a lesson learned about how much fertilizer is needed to suit your specific conditions.