Spring has come to New Zealand, and I started on this year’s vegetable garden.
One of plants that I am really looking forward to harvesting is Red Shiso, or Perilla purple.
Red Shiso: A Great Traditional Japanese Herb
In Japan, people like making sour, pickled plums called Umeboshi.
They are such a bright red in color, despite of young plums being green or pale yellow.
The reason why they have such red color is because, plums are pickled with additional ingredient: red shiso (Perilla) herbs.
Red shiso herb has purple pigment, which turns very bright red when mixed with acid.
So when red shiso is used in combination with sour ume Japanese plums (that have very acidic juice), it produces that bright red color.
Red shiso themselves have very nice, original fragrance that matches well with Japanese dish, raw sashimi or rice.
So I wanted to grow my very own Red shiso in my garden, hoping that I will be able to harvest my own red shiso to use for cooking.
Red shiso is called by various name. See this wikipedia page for Shiso herbs. –> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiso
They are sometimes called Perilla red or Perilla Purple.
Growing Perilla purple from Seeds: Watch out for birds!
So I picked up some Perilla purple seeds from Trademe.
In general, Perilla plants grow very well in full or half shades, and are not very picky on soil conditions either.
They do prefer well-drained soil, though.
They are energetic and supposed to be quite easy to grow.
However, their seeds take a while to germinate; approximately 10 days ~ two weeks for germination.
Germination requires exposure to sunlight, so you cannot bury seeds too deep and cover completely with soil.
You need to sow them shallow, and cover them with only a thin later of fine soil.
This sounded rather tricky for me, so I decided to let seeds germinate on wet tissue papers, then plant them into small pots once they start germinating.
Two weeks waiting and watering seeds for germination is very long…. especially compared to my cabbages and beans sprout really quickly only after 2-3 days!
It took nearly one month for perilla seeds to germinate and produce small new leaves.
I decided to bring pots outside, now that seeds have started to grow 2-3 cm tall ….. but this was a BIG mistake.
One morning when I came out of the house, many Perilla purple seedlings that were growing in my pots all disappeared!
Did they all die and melt down over night…. ? No.
It is most likely that bird outsides ate them all.
Even in Japan, birds like sparrows love Perilla seeds and sprouts.
I mean, even humans eat Perilla leaves and seeds, so they will be some delicious treats for wild birds.
Come to think of it, I did hear many birds jumping close by the window this morning…..
So my first attempt to grow Perilla purple from seeds, failed and I wasted a whole month….. orz
Trying again!! Growing Perilla Purple!
So I decided to try again.
Perhaps this time, I will grow them to be a larger size plant indoors first, then take them outside.
Perilla purple seeds germinating on wet tissue papers; it takes two weeks to get to this stage.
Some main new leaves starting to come out…. 2-3 cm tall.
Plant size reached 10cm… Leaves are much larger now too!
Too early to relax just yet, but I replanted the into larger planter.
Planter is placed under our room where we regularly hang washings and put other outdoor items, so hopefully birds will not come near it.
Perilla plant is still young and small, but when you pinch an end of a leaf, you can smell its characteristic fragrance…. yummy smell!
When plenty of leaves are ready for harvest, I may use the to make Shiso-drinks (Perilla tea), or perhaps salted-perilla red flakes that tastes great on rice.
I just cannot wait for them to grow larger and start producing more leaves for harvesting!
