🌱✗ Tested and false“Land cress needs cloches or fleece to survive a Scottish winter”
Land cress is rated H7, hardy in the severest European continental winters, below -20C. That's well beyond what protection is normally needed for.
Our read It's a low, leafy salad plant, which looks fragile, so protection feels like the safe default. The hardiness rating says otherwise.
What to do: Grow it outdoors through winter without protection. Cover is about extending picking through the very worst weather for comfort, not survival.
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- RHSH7 hardiness rating: hardy in the severest European continental climates, below -20C
“Land cress is an annual, like most salad leaves”
It's a biennial, taking one to two years to reach maturity, flowering in its second year.
Our read It's grown and picked like a fast annual salad crop, so it's easy to assume that's what it is botanically, but the plant itself is on a longer, two-year clock.
What to do: Don't expect land cress to finish for good after one flowering the way a true annual salad crop does; it's on its own longer cycle.
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- RHSBiennial, producing a rosette of leaves, with flowers in spring/summer of its second year
“Land cress has no real pest problems”
Flea beetle is a genuine risk for this crop, which is otherwise generally disease-free.
Our read The 'generally disease-free' half of that is true and worth knowing, but it isn't the same claim as no pest problems at all.
What to do: Watch for flea beetle the same way you would on rocket or radish, even though land cress is otherwise a low-trouble crop.
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- RHSMay be susceptible to flea beetle; generally disease-free
“Land cress needs the same running water or boggy ground as true watercress”
Ordinary garden soil is all it needs: moist clay or loam in full sun or partial shade. Nothing about running water or a stream is required.
Our read The name and the watercress-substitute reputation both invite the assumption, but the entire reason this plant exists as a garden crop is that it doesn't carry that requirement.
What to do: Grow it in an ordinary bed or border kept consistently moist, not a bog garden or a stream-fed bed.
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- RHSGrow in moist soil in full sun or semi shade — no water feature or running water named anywhere in the cultivation notes
