To please yourself and your loved ones with delicious dishes, you can arrange a small garden in the room, for example, to grow a watercress on the windowsill. It is tasty and useful, and besides it is simple in planting and leaving. Observing some rules, you can enjoy the delicious greenery all year round.
What does the watercress look like?
An annual vegetable plant is popular with cooks. Finding out how the home watercress grows, it is worth noting that he has a thin stalk with a lot of leaves and a simple root. While the stalk is white, the plant is considered young and can be eaten. Flowering is observed in June or July, so in this period there are flowers of white or pink color, after which a fruit-pod is formed. Cress salad, the types of which differ in appearance, is undemanding, so growing should not be a problem.
- Whole-leafed. The plant can be fast or late. The rosette is large, and the leaves are narrow and slightly incised.
- Curly. The rosette is small and is 17 cm. The leaves of the grown watercress on the windowsill will be heavily indented and elevated. There are fast and medium-sized varieties.
- Sowing. In this species the rosette is large and is 19-21 cm. The leaves grow horizontally and have a broad, unified shape.
A few words about how correctly there is a grown watercress on the windowsill. It is best to include it in the recipes of dishes in fresh form, so it retains the maximum of benefit. It is worth noting that the taste of greenery is like a burning mixture of horseradish, radish and garlic. It is most useful to combine a watercress with olive oil. A young plant perfectly emphasizes the taste of cheese, cottage cheese, cold soups and sauces. It is perfectly combined with legumes, pears, apples, aubergines and other vegetables. Salad is better to tear with your hands, not cut.
How to plant a watercress on the windowsill?
If desired, at home, you can grow any vegetable and greens, which can not but please people who do not have a plot of land. First, buy fresh seeds (they should not be older than six months) and always check their integrity. Planting watercress in the home can be done in several ways:
- Using an inert substrate. The advantages of watercress include the fact that it can be grown without soil. Take a container and put a sponge, sawdust, cotton wool, gauze or other substrate on the bottom, the thickness of which should be 1.5-2 cm. Pour it with water and separately soak the seeds. After this, shift them to the prepared substrate, placing them as evenly as possible. Cover the top with a film to create a greenhouse effect. Place the container in a semi-dark place away from hot batteries. In a day there will be shoots, and you can remove the film. To grow a watercress on the windowsill, do not forget to water the shoots and rotate them 180 ° every day. Conduct and fertilize, which will be discussed below.
- With the use of soil. In a container with a height of 8-10 cm at the bottom, put a drainage, for example, claydite, and its layer should be 2-3 cm. It is important that the vase has openings for the escape of excess moisture. Pour a layer of 3-4 cm of soil into it and pour out pre-soaked seeds on top. Top with a layer of soil in 1 cm. Lightly moisten using a sprayer, and cover with a film or glass. Further actions, as in the first method.
- Using a tea sieve. Thanks to this method, you can very quickly collect watercress at home. In the sieve, pour the seeds, put it in a cup and pour in a warm (30 ° C) water through it. Put it on the window sill and wait for the result.
Cress salad on the windowsill - planting time
Greenery is popular due to the fact that it can be grown throughout the year. Some gardeners assure that the best time for planting seeds is early spring, that is the beginning of March. There is an opinion on how to plant a watercress correctly, that the most juicy greens to get, you need to sow in August. Note that the plant must be regularly sown, about every 5 days, to update the already cut salad.
Watercress - flowering
It has already been mentioned that the green on the windowsill starts to bloom in June-July. The flowers are small and collected in the inflorescence-brush. Many believe that after this, the cultivation of watercress home should be stopped, but in fact it is not so, because the greens are suitable for food, it just acquires a slight bitterness, which many like very much. After this, a fruit-pod is formed, in which there are seeds of ovoid form of yellow-brown color. They ripen in August and maintain their germination for 3-4 years.
Cress salad - when to harvest?
Enjoy the taste and get a benefit from the greenery grown on the windowsill, you can when the stem height reaches about 8 cm. When figuring out when to cut a watercress, it is worth pointing out that it is recommended to harvest the harvest in the morning or in the evening. Use scissors to cut stems with leaves. Please note that you can store greens for 24 hours in a refrigerator in a container of water. The next day, it will lose its useful properties. When the height of the stems reaches 14 cm, the plant is completely removed.
Cress salad - growing conditions
Want to make a small garden on the windowsill, then follow a few simple recommendations:
- Lighting. Salad can be grown both on the north and northwest windowsill. In cold weather , it is recommended to use additional illumination - phytolamps or fluorescent light. The device should be at a height of 0.5 m from the watercress on the windowsill. When using LED lamps, they can be placed at a height of 5 cm from plants. The duration of a day of light should not be more than 14 hours.
- Temperature. Growing cress-salad on a balcony or a window sill, it is necessary to consider, that the raised temperature can lead to desiccation of a ground and destruction of plantations. The values from 17 to 20 ° C are considered ideal.
- Decimation. Experts recommend regularly removing extra young plants. The first time the procedure should be carried out a week after emergence, but note that the distance between the shoots should not be more than 2 cm. The second time to remove excess sprouts is recommended after the formation of several leaves. After that, between the plants should be at least 5 cm. Due to this, the watercress on the windowsill will expand, not stretch upwards.
Greenery watercress - soil
If it was decided to plant the plant in the ground, then it is best to go after him to the store. Choose a universal "Biogrunt", which will contain all the important substances and it does not require preparation, that is, removal of microbes and so on. When planting a watercress at home, remember that there must be a lot of humus in the soil. It's on that account, if you use ordinary land, which must necessarily be baked in the oven, so that there are no bacteria.
How to water a watercress at home?
For rapid growth, it is important to constantly maintain soil moisture, because if you allow the drying of the soil, the plant will quickly age and taste it will be bitter. For irrigation use a watering can with a long spout. Growing cress-salad at home on the windowsill also includes regular spraying of plantations, for which use water at room temperature.
Cress-salad on the windowsill - top dressing
It is recommended to apply fertilizers several times:
- When the first real leaf appears, use a solution of urea , for which 25 g of carbamide should be taken on a bucket of water. You can bring it under the root and carry out spraying.
- To grow well greens watercress, a week after the first fertilizing, add fertilizers, for which mix 20 g of superphosphate and 10 g of potassium salt and ammonium sulfate. The specified amount is calculated on a bucket of water. After harvesting, apply fertilizer again, so that the growing plants provide nutrients.
Pests of watercress
As the greens on the windowsill grow rapidly, then her illnesses simply do not have time to amaze. In rare cases, if the soil is too moist, a black leg may appear. In this case, the only way out is to transplant the plant, since it can not be treated with fungicides, otherwise the salad will not be suitable for food. The description of the watercress indicates that only two pests can attack it - a cruciferous flea and a cabbage fluke.
Than to process a watercress from pests?
If cruciferous fleas were seen on the plant, then spraying should be carried out by dissolving wood ash or tobacco dust in water. This scares off the pest and does not spoil the quality of the greens. Many are interested in what to process the greens of cress-salad with a cabbage butterfly, but only chemicals can cope with it, and they are forbidden for this plant. The only solution is to catch manually. You can use light as a bait.