We have land cress growing wild on our allotments - it's almost a weed. Whilst it's nice to eat in salads and is very winter hardy, it's a problem to clean for eating. Any tips on growing and harvesting ?
I grow it in one of those large pots with a water reservoir in the bottom. I have been picking it happily for about 5 months now, always clean and never going to seed, so I am very pleased. Next to it are similar pots with watercress, mixed salad leaves, rocket and "Salad Bowl" lettuces. My most successful mixed salad year ever.
I wish I could get mine to germinate, then I'll worry about cleaning it.
The variegated form of landcress(much bigger) self seeds on my plot.
I too found land cress hard to get started, but once on the plot it self-seeds very freely.
I LOVE land cress volunteers - I eat quite a bit but the main reason is that it is a different kind of gardening - you are husbanding a wild thing - a bit like keeping bees or reindeer except that the food value is secondary to the favours it does you by crowding out REAL weeds.
Think about it - a REAL weed will either be perennial OR:
1) Go to seed of you rest the hoe for a few weeks - even in poor conditions where it's rosette is smaller than a 5p coin - whereas land cress NEVER produces seed until the following year.
2) Be difficult to pull out (though grabbing every single grubby leaf at once can work) - whereas land cress will usually come out even if you only grab the clean leaves that don't lie flat.
3) Tower over your crops and shade them if you let it - not land cress.
Not to mention that most weeds either don't taste good or are hard to separate from nasty or dangerous ones (a bit of spurge in your chickweed can spoil your whole month).
Land cress is also a green manure that you don't have to pay for or spend time sowing - just let a few run to seed.
The same can be said about volunteer salsify apart from needing a spade to get it out.
Cheers.
I pull them into individual leaves, then just swirl in a sink full of water. To be honest I haven't found them difficult to clean, and mine aren't gritty either. By the time all the salad plants had a careful wash, the landcress is clean. It self seeds and is quite winter hardy, but outside the leaves are tiny. They are larger in the greenhouse, so I just transplant a few and let them get on with it. This time of year the greenhouse doesn't need watering either as there is so much water in the surrounding soil.