How to Plant and Grow Watercress Nasturtium officinale
Some people have a sweet tooth, and treats like brownies and ice cream call to them. Others, like me, have a spice tooth.
We like lots of chilis in our food and for our salad greens to bite back.
If you fall into the peppery spice-lover camp, watercress should be front and center in your gardening arsenal.
Actually, even if you don’t love spice, it should still feature prominently. The greens lose some of their pep if you cook them, while retaining a bright, green, fresh flavor.
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Watercress is an aquatic plant, so we will, of course, cover hydroponic techniques for growing it in this guide.
But it also grows well in soil, provided you give it enough moisture. And it makes a smart indoor or outdoor plant, so apartment-dwellers and homesteaders alike are covered.
Although it’s an upright grower in water thanks to its hollow stems that allow it to float, watercress will also creep along the ground, making it a marvelous edible ground cover in partially sunny areas.
Hardy in USDA Zones 6 to 9, anyone can grow this leafy green as an annual, though it’s technically a perennial. Ready to join the watercress party?
Coming right up, here are all the things we’ll cover:
Let’s dig into the history of watercress first.
Cultivation and History
Watercress is a brassica and it enjoys the cool conditions and ample moisture that most brassicas do.
Despite the botanical genus name Nasturtium, it isn’t closely related to nasturtium flowers, which are Tropaeolum species. And don’t confuse watercress with cress (Lepidium sativum) or upland cress (Barbarea verna).
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One of the secrets to producing big, bushy basil plants is trimming. Many gardeners are shy about harvesting from their herbs and don’t want to cut them back in case it damages the plants or reduces yield. I’m the opposite, constantly trimming herbs like basil to use fresh, or preserve by drying or freezing. Not only does it promote bushier growth it also increases stem and leaf production. Are you ready to learn how to trim your basil plants for maximum yield? When it comes to pruning basil, it doesn’t matter if you’re growing basil in containers or garden beds. It doesn’t matter if you’
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A conversation with Sarah Price about how she designs her planting schemes is fascinating. She works in an unfettered way, with no specific planting plans but an intuitive sense of the plants that will work well together to form the nature-inspired compositions she is known for. Her gardens are like exquisite paintings, comprising layers of detail with a gentle succession of plants that provide interest for most of the year. This summer combination comes from Sarah’s own garden on the edge of Abergavenny. Here, she has created different areas and habitats, including a dry garden in the old walled kitchen garden.
When tapped to design a series of planters for our2024 Idea House in the Kiawah River community on Johns Island, South Carolina, plant pro Steph Green of Contained Creations in Richmond, Virginia, knew exactly what the waterfront property needed. “We wanted to create the most beautiful and biggest statement container gardens, but they needed to be durable and last a long time with minimal upkeep,” says Green. “That’s why picking evergreens or really tough perennials from the Southern Living Plant Collection was kind of the launching point for each individual design.”
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Over the past few years, Pamela Anderson has had more time to contemplate life. That is, until things kicked into high gear again—but more on that later. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, she moved from France, sold her house in Malibu, and headed north to the small town on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where she was born and raised. She hunkered down with her two grown sons, Brandon and Dylan. She bought her grandmother’s old motel, renovated it, and set up her parents there. A lifelong cook, she perfected her baking skills. She reclaimed and expanded her grandfather’s garden on the same land where she had run barefoot as a self-described wild child. It’s the site of both her greatest childhood joys and harrowing traumas, which she describes candidly in her 2023 autobiography, Love, Pamela, and Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story. Almost poetically, for Pamela has journaled and written poetry her whole life, she has reclaimed her true self and her youthful creativity on the exact spot where they were born. When I had the chance to sit with her and talk over Zoom recently, our conversation quickly moved beyond her new cookbook, I Love You (due out in October), to all aspects of life—and her ability to find the deepest of meanings in even the tiniest of seeds.