How to Grow Watercress Indoors

Learn how to grow heirloom watercress at home, and skip the expensive store-bought variety.

By William Woys Weaver
Updated on November 12, 2024
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by AdobeStock/Fotema

Learn how to grow watercress, indoors or outdoors, using the same methods gardeners have employed with heirloom watercress varieties since the 1870s.

A Brief History of Heirloom Watercress Varieties

Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) is a hardy perennial introduced from Europe in the eighteenth century. General Peter Muhlenberg recognized it growing wild in streams at Valley Forge in 1777 and recommended it for the army then encamped there. It was a much-sought-after salading in the early spring because its vitamin-rich leaves served as an antidote to winter diets lacking green vegetables.

Historically, only one sort of watercress was grown in this country, the common green sort still found naturalized in some streams in eastern parts of the country. It had no commercial varietal name and was considered inferior to Erfurt Sweet Watercress, a German variety introduced into the United States in the early 1870s. In any case, it preferred cool, clear, running streams, and today, where it is still found, it may be used as a measure of water quality. Like trout, watercress will fail in water that is not free of pollution.

Watercress can be obtained as seed, which is scattered at the source of a gravelly stream where the water is 2 to 3 inches deep. Once established, the cress will self-propagate, but if it chokes the stream, it must be lifted and the space cleared of mud and debris. In many parts of the country, especially near large cities, farmers in the last century constructed a system of shallow paddies along streams to create beds for watercress. This effort was repaid handsomely. As Peter Henderson pointed out in Gardening for Profit (1886 edition: 192), “Many a farmer in the vicinity of New York realizes more profit from watercress, cut from the margin of a brook running through his farm in two or three weeks in spring, than from his whole year’s hard labor in growing corn, hay or potatoes.”

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