Mother's Day

How to Grow a Watercress Container Garden

Garnish your food with tasty, shiny watercress leaves — or make a yummy salad with watercress as the main attraction.

Excerpted from Ready, Set, Grow! by DK BooksDorling Kindersley
Filed under: Container Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, How To, Vegetables

This super-healthy plant is full of many of the vitamins and minerals that your body needs and will help to keep you in tiptop shape. The secret of growing watercress is to keep it in full sun and the soil damp, but make sure it's never saturated, since overwatering can kill your crop. This project takes four weeks to complete.

Materials Needed:

recycled container
seed compost
plastic tray

plastic bottle
watercress seeds
scissors

1. Fill a recycled container.

After putting holes in the base of the container, fill it 3/4 full of seed compost. Place it onto a plastic tray and wet the soil, using a plastic bottle with a few holes in its lid as a spray.

2. Add watercress seeds.

Sprinkle watercress seeds over the surface of the seed compost. Gently press them into the soil. Cover the container while the seeds germinate.

Sprinkle Watercress Seeds Over Moist Soil

3. Keep soil moist at all times.

Make sure there's always water in the plastic tray. Tap water contains many of the minerals watercress needs to grow. The growing process will take four weeks.