Add another leafy green to your growing repertoire this season with Ellen Mary’s expert advice
February can be a dull month but there’s always Valentine’s Day to stir some love into the cool winter air! Some of you might be starting to sow some seeds and eagerly waiting for the warmer days of spring to arrive. Gardening brings so much hope, just knowing that spring will come and the garden will come alive again is so helpful for wellbeing after a long winter. Although looking forward is so important, it’s just as essential to also be grateful for the present moment. Spend some time observing your garden and take notice of any changes and signs of spring to come. Simply being present is a great way to enjoy what you can see at any time of year, and be grateful for your garden or winter harvests.
About bittercress
When there isn’t so much growing in the garden, you will most definitely notice some of the more tenacious weeds showing up no matter what the weather is doing. Bittercress is the ‘weed’ you might find growing in the compost of new container plants or dotted around your garden during the majority of months of the year. It self-seeds easily by exploding pods with many seeds that travel far and wide. So, you might be wondering why I would suggest this is a great plant. There are two to look out for – Cardamine hirsuta (hairy bittercress) and Cardamine flexuosa (wavy bittercress). Both have flowers for pollinators, especially for early season bees, and both have edible and tasty foliage. So, if you leave the flowers in early spring for pollinators, eat the leaves and stalks in salads then discard before they set seed, it’s not so bad after all. Plus, it is full of vitamin C, magnesium, beta-carotene, calcium and antioxidants. Another ‘weed’ that is actually beneficial, leaving me to continue wondering why we use the term 'weed' at all.
How to grow bittercress
You most likely don’t need to know how to grow it, as it is abundant pretty much everywhere. It does, however, make for a perfect tray of micro-greens. Simply fill a tray or container with compost and sow the seeds, keeping them moist and in a light position until they grow to a harvestable size. They taste similar to broccoli x rocket but a little milder and are an easy way to pack a lot of nutrition into your cooking. Identifying bittercress is very easy, it looks much like any other member of the mustard family with tiny white flowers. Hairy bittercress is smaller than wavy bittercress which can grow up to 50cm tall.
Harvesting bittercress
You could just go ahead and pull it up as
