Home Vegetable Gardening: Growing Garden Cress

Herb gardening has swept the country. According the National Gardening Association over fifteen million people grow herbs.

An easy fast growing herb to add to your repertoire is garden cress. Garden cress is peppery tangy flavored herb that is easy to add to anyone's home garden.

Here are some steps that you can follow to ensure the success of the garden cress that you grow at home.

A lot of herbs are grown by themselves in a "herb garden". But it doesn't have to be this way. Garden Cress makes a great companion plant to bush beans, beets, carrots, lettuce and spinach to name a few. So keep that in mind when planting. The seeds of garden cress are small, so when you plant them a light covering of dirt is all they will need. Garden Cress seeds will germinate in as soon as 2 days and as far out as 6, so as you can see they grow quickly.

Garden cress likes the soil's neutral pH to be as close to neutral (7.0) as possible. Test your soil with a home testing kit, available from any garden or home center for just a couple of dollars. Follow the instructions that come with the kit to raise or lower your soil's pH level as needed.

Garden Cress likes full sun so pick a spot that receives the most sunlight and if you have an indoor herb garden, make sure you pick a window sill that receives sunlight first thing in the morning. As for watering, garden cress does not need much. Just keep the soil moist with moderate watering and you will be ok.

Your plants are ready to be harvested when they reach two to three inches in height. Simply cut them at the soil line with garden scissors. If you follow the steps above you should have no problem harvesting your garden cress in as little as two weeks. Do not let them grow to long as they could develop a bitter taste.

As you can see you should be able to add this wonderful tasting herb to your garden in no time and with very little effort.




About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the Rest of Us, available where gardening books are sold. Sign up for Mike’s vegetable gardening newsletter at his website: AveragePersonGardening.com and he will send you a free pack of vegetable seeds to get your garden started.