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 ?


Rachael

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

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!

Mike.

In article , Rachael of Nex, the Wiccan
Rat writes
I'd be interested to see what cress seeds actually look like on the plant.
Never seen 'em other than in the packet !

Probably in a seed pod, most likely long like a very miniature green
carrot, based on what other crucifers are like.

It's Lepidum sativum, btw, according to a Google search. Landcress
appears to be Barbarea vulgaris.
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

Kay wrote in message ...
[...]
appears to be Barbarea vulgaris.

Ah, good old Barbara the Vulgar! Those were the days, eh? She was very
popular when I was a student.

Mike.

As I understand it, the "cress" you buy in punnets frome the
greengrocer's is not cress but mustard.
When I used to grow it you bought a packet of each and sowed the
cress a few days before the mustard because the latter germinates more
quickly.
Mustard seeds are pale and round. Cress seeds are a conker colour and
smaller. When they get wet they develop a slimy coating.
I have never grown cress beyond the seedling stage to see what
develops.


Pam in Bristol