I decided to show in detail how to grow garden cress on my windowsill. I love it—tasty, healthy, grows incredibly fast, and practically requires nothing beyond watering and misting. Its flavor is mildly mustardy, and freshly sown seeds smell like good coffee. Growing cress is pure joy—quick and consistently successful results, making it a great activity to share with kids. Highly, highly recommend!
Growing Garden Cress in Pictures
Preparing the soil mixture: use any available soil, perlite, and vermiculite. The additives should not exceed 20% of the soil volume. For cress, you don’t actually need to prepare mixes or sterilize the soil—this salad can grow on doubled gauze or a centimeter-thick layer of vermiculite, deriving its nutrients from its seed. However, I prefer to grow garden cress in soil. By the way, I reuse this soil multiple times by cleaning it of roots and treating it with Phytocide.
To get a yield for 4-5 salads, you’ll need a shallow dish or container that can be densely sown with a handful of seeds. You can sow them very densely, but I like sowing neat rows in furrows. In this case, I used a large tray from an empty rabbit cage, filled the bottom with 3 cm of prepared soil, and slightly pressed furrows into it with a ruler, filling them with garden cress seeds.
I carefully moisten each furrow with a spray bottle; you can also use a watering can with a fine stream. The seeds need to be moistened—they’ll swell and start sprouting within a couple of hours!
I cover the tray with plastic wrap until the first sprouts emerge. Mist the soil twice a day and keep it in the shade. Cress does not like excessive heat—it’s not good for it. For sprouting, a temperature of up to 20 degrees Celsius is ideal, with no direct sunlight.
By the 3rd day, the garden cress sprouts emerge uniformly. Remove the plastic wrap and place the tray in sunlight. Spray 2-3 times a day; start proper watering on the 4th day—garden cress drinks a lot of water, so keep an eye on the soil’s moisture.
A closer look
This is how the garden cress grows on the 6th day!
One-week-old garden cress.
Garden cress at 10 days old.
A garden cress jungle after 10 days!
This is how garden cress grows after two weeks on a sunny windowsill with frequent misting. Water it once a day, focusing on each furrow.
