Monday, November 1, 2010

Watercress, from grocery to pond

When it comes to food and saving money I can be one of the most oportunistic shoppers ya eva' met. Not that I am the lady who pulls out all the coupons and holds up the line cause the half of them are expired- I am the lady who is secretly looking for produce that will keep on giving. Produce with seeds in it that I can plant (winter squash, apples, pears, avacodoe), root veggies (like turnips, rutabaga, radishes, beets) I can put the tops back in the ground to later eat their greens and get seeds from them after they flower, I even plant the bottoms of my onions and eat the green stems that grow back out.
My latest grocery find though has me majorly stoked! Watercress... organic watercress being sold not at the health food store but at the regular ole' grocery... watercress that still had it's ROOTS.
*
I bought the watercress straight up to plant in my pond, mushy spring water spots...
I searched around my pond for a good soggy place to plant those roots in the ground, in hopes to have watercress growing in bunches over the next few years.
I dug a hole easily with a stick, you can see the water seeping into the hole...
Looking bee-U-Tee-ful... now i can pick a few greens off to eat and let the rest make a home here.
I love LoVe LOVE grocery items that keep on giving. :)
Do any of ya'll do this too, with grocery foods?
UPDATE:::
Thanks to oko box reader Jason for pointing out that this is a different kind of Cress then watercress, it's called * upland cress * and does not grow in the water like watercress. It grows on land.
Go to Jason's Blog, he has cool as hec pictures of animals he caught on one of those special motion cameras!

xoxox

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Easiest thing in the world: Buy bulbs of garlic. Break off each clove and plant separately. They grow into their own plant. You can pull them up later to harvest or replant or just keep enjoying the green sprouts.

jason said...

Hey,

Hope you are not disappointed by this, but I don't think you have watercress. I work in a produce dept and notice it there to. If you look on the tag in your picture it says 'upland cress'. It's basically watercress that grows on land and reseeds really well. You can google it. Still a good plant to have just not sure how well it will take to the water.

Miss Voodoo said...

Anonymous :)
Thanks for sharing... i have done that in the past too, garlic is good for so much stuff. My donkey eats it every once in a while, it's supposed to be good for killing worms. I can't eat it myself for some reason though :(

Jason!
AW shit!! You are right... good thing someone reads the labels. ha, I never was good at that, all i saw was "cress" and the shape of the leaf.

Luckily I just planted it this morning, and can easily move it onto land.
Also cool cause i love mustard greens, and upland cress makes lottsa seeds. :))))

kirk said...

when the settlers came out west in the 19th century they brought watercress with them--I know a spring fed stream right in town that is choked with cress. it grows right in the cold water. I see an elderly Hmong lady cutting it but other than that it is left alone. My mentor told me to be careful of eating it raw downstream of livestock because of chance of liver fluke.