It's not for nothing that cress is often the first plant that children grow themselves in biology lessons or as a class project. Raising them is child's play. Even impatient people can enjoy it, because there are only a few days until the harvest.
How can I grow cress easily and quickly?
To grow cress successfully, choose a bright location without direct sunlight, ensure consistent moisture and harvest the plants after a few days. Cress can be planted on soil, cotton wool or kitchen paper.
Grow cress in the garden or on the windowsill
Cress produces edible leaves very quickly both outdoors and indoors on the windowsill. Growing in the garden takes a little longer than on the windowsill. This is due to the higher temperatures that normally prevail in the house.
Unlike most other plants, cress doesn't just grow on soil. It can even be sown on cotton wool, kitchen roll or paper handkerchiefs.
In the house, sowing on cotton wool or kitchen paper has great advantages, because these surfaces are not contaminated by germs or mold spores, so the cress does not mold as quickly.
Which location is best?
- Sunny or partially shaded in the garden
- In the house as bright as possible
- Avoid direct sunlight
A cress bed in the window should be as bright as possible. The plants can only tolerate direct sun to a limited extent as the heat causes them to dry out very quickly.
Make sure you have enough moisture
Moisture is the biggest problem when caring for cress. The soil or subsoil must be consistently moist so that the seeds and later the plants do not dry out.
When growing indoors, the moisture content of the planting substrate should be checked daily with your fingers and the cress should be watered if necessary. If there is water in the pot, the excess water is carefully poured off.
In the garden, care must also be taken to ensure that the plants are neither too dry nor too moist.
Cress is ready to harvest very quickly
In the house, the cress is ready to harvest after just a few days. When growing in the garden, it takes a little longer until you can harvest the cress.
Tips & Tricks
If you want to grow your cress entirely from your own harvest, you should leave a few plants in the garden. They form flowers from which pods with seeds later form. However, it is not possible to harvest seeds from the plants on the windowsill because the flowers are not pollinated.
