"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
om...
"Rachael of Nex, the Wiccan Rat" wrote in message
...
What happens to cress (I assume this is land cress - the stuff you get
in
packs for kiddies, or adults who love it like me, to grow) if you plant
it
on kitchen towels and leave it, without cutting it to eat ? I ask
because I
have a soil pot that I am considering putting cress / mustard mix in,
for
the kitchen windowsill all year round. However, the soil pot isn't one I
can
drag up and start again with if it goes wrong so I can't really try it
and
see without some idea of how it will grow (a family pet is buried
inside,
only a small one so don't freak out !)
Will cress and or mustard just keep growing and evenutally go to seed -
and
if so, what does it look like - tall, short, bushy, can you eat all of
it ?
I've always planted it on wet tissue and cut it about ten days later but
sooner or later they gotta seed, right ?

I always do this with my little companion animals, btw (have been for
the
last ten years) - they make herbs grow great and this way the little
sweeties don't get dug up by foxes and they remain beautiful even after
they
die (yes, I am sentimental and I love my animals). I've just not done
cress
in this way before.

Any ideas ?

I don't think (but I could easily be wrong) what we grow as cress is
'land cress'/'American cress', which is like a dry-land kind of
watercress; so I don't know what it ends up like.

It's odd but I have been trying to figure out what cress, as in cress wot we
get in packet, really is - but poking about on the net doesn't seem to
reveal much. I assumed it was land cress but shrug other than that I
didn't find anything that might fit the description cos I didn't think it
was water cress proper - I coudl find no "real name" as such. What I'd like
is a picture and a big label next to it saying "This ---- is the stuff." ;-)

Mustard, though,
(and rape, which is what you often get under the name of 'mustard')
will get leggy and rather hot-tasting: quite unlike the little sprouts
we put in sandwiches. I'd surmise that cress will do much the same,
and neither will be very succulent. But if the blotting-paper cress
really is the same as land-cress, it'll get hot and dry, too, unless
you keep plucking the young leaves. Once they've gone to seed, the
story will be over.

I'd be interested to see what cress seeds actually look like on the plant.
Never seen 'em other than in the packet !

More a fun thing than a really viable vegetable
option on the windowsill, I'd say. But I'm all for fun.

I'l give it a go then - can't hurt. I like cress and mustard alot ! I
suspect any roots such a plant would put down would be fairly small and
possibly die off pretty quick on their own (thus leaving the pot free for
something else at a later date.)

Your pet funeral habits sound ideal for that difficult herb, basil; at
least according to Keats, if you fancy a grisly poem at bed-time (not
for the children, I hasten to add). But Keats was more a boxer than a
gardener, so he may have misled me!

I don't know the poem myself but I do know that I have basil (and Thai
basil) growing as if it were going out of fashion in my ratty pots, and have
had for the last few years. Ditto lemon balm, lavender, and parsley. More
parsley than I know what to do with as it goes. Parsely sauce anyone ? ;-)



Rachael