🌱✗ Tested and false“Watering rocket generously gives it a stronger, better flavour”
Excess water dilutes rocket's peppery flavour, the opposite of what generous watering is often assumed to do.
Our read The instinct that more care produces a better result doesn't hold here: consistent, moderate moisture is what the plant actually needs, not extra water for extra flavour.
What to do: Keep the soil moist and even rather than heavily watered, especially if a strong peppery flavour is the point of growing it.
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“Wild rocket and salad rocket are just different names for the same plant”
They're genuinely different species. Salad rocket is an annual that dies after flowering; wild rocket is a perennial that keeps producing leaves for several years, including after it flowers.
Our read Both get called 'rocket' and both taste peppery, so it's an easy mix-up, but the two behave differently enough in the ground that treating them as interchangeable causes real confusion about when a plant is actually finished.
What to do: Check which type you've bought: salad rocket needs repeat sowing through the season, while a wild rocket plant is a longer-term fixture that survives flowering.
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- RHSSalad rocket is an annual, dying after flowering and seeding; wild rocket is a perennial that continues producing edible leaves after flowering
“Once a rocket plant flowers, that's the end of the harvest”
True for salad rocket, but false as a blanket rule: wild rocket keeps producing edible leaves after flowering, and its flowers are themselves edible. Salad rocket's harvest does genuinely end at flowering, and the plant should be removed.
Our read This isn't sources disagreeing with each other so much as the same claim being true for one plant and false for another, which is exactly the kind of mix-up that comes from treating 'rocket' as one thing.
What to do: Remove salad rocket once it flowers and resow. Leave wild rocket in place and keep picking; trim it back if it gets too large rather than pulling it up.
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- RHSSalad rocket: after flowering and seeding, the plants will die. Wild rocket: will continue producing edible leaves after flowering
“Rocket only does well in a fertile, well-improved bed”
That's true for salad rocket, but wild rocket grows well in poorer, drier soil, and is robust and easy even there.
Our read Fertile soil advice is usually safe to generalise across a whole crop, but rocket splits down the middle here: one type wants the improved bed, the other genuinely doesn't need it.
What to do: Put wild rocket in a spare, less-improved corner rather than assuming it needs the same soil prep as salad rocket or your other leaf crops.
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- RHSWild rocket will also grow well in poorer, drier soil, robust and easy to grow even there
“Take all the leaves from one rocket plant at a time, it's faster”
Taking lots of leaves from just one plant slows its recovery. Picking a few leaves from each plant across the row keeps the whole row producing.
Our read It feels efficient to finish one plant before moving to the next, but that habit costs you the next round of leaves from that plant specifically.
What to do: Spread picking across the row, taking a few leaves per plant, rather than stripping individual plants bare in turn.
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- RHSIf you take lots of leaves from just one plant, it will be slow to recover
