Land Cress

A tasty, fast-growing, winter-hardy salad plant in the Brassica family, with a similar peppery flavour to watercress. It has excellent frost hardiness and tolerates wet winter weather outdoors. This low-maintenance cut-and-come-again plant is highly nutritious and largely untroubled by pests & diseases, a valuable source of fresh raw winter greens when few other plants are cropping. Native to Southern Europe, land cress is known by many different names including upland cress, American cress, Bermuda cress, early yellowrocket and Creasy Greens. This indicates a widespread and long use of this plant by humans, perhaps because it’s hardy, easy to grow and nutritious, being rich in vitamins A, C and K. This particular seed strain has been grown and saved for over 20 years by Simon, who grew it for many years on the dry, chalky soil of Brighton and more recently in South Wales, so it is adapted to very different climates and geologies – and most recently withstood 6 months of winter rainfall with barely a slug nibble. Truly one of the toughest salad herbs in the veg patch and also very useful as a winter green manure cover crop to protect beds. Approx. 1,200 seeds. Botanical name: Barbarea verna