garden cress

[zibafu]

Hi, people, I decided to grow some garden cress a week or so ago, the reason being I had a pet budgie, and I am looking to introduce more veg, fruits etc into his diet, read online that they can eat cress, so thought what the hell, its easy enough to grow.

I went on ebay and bough a couple of 250 seed packets, which arrived, on... thursday last week I think.

Anyhow, I planted them the same day using some multi purpose compost I had previously bought, and out of the 500 seeds, only about 70 of them have grown, is it normal for less than a quarter of them to grow, cause it seems really odd to me, the ones that have grown have grown quite well, in the 4 days they have been growing, I have kept them well watered, kept them in decent light etc.

The only thing is its been really warm for the last week, like 25'c, could that have affected the growing in any way ?

[David Hare-Scott]

It depends on how old the seeds are, I would expect fresh cress to have a higher germination rate than that.

I doubt it.

D

[zibafu]

ahh forgot about this thread hehe, I think I planted the seeds to deep in the compost, the rest of them suddenly burst forth a couple of days after posting this.

When does cress start producing its own seeds? Cause Ive trimmed a few down and the budgie loves it, so I would obviously like to keep growing it but, I don't wanna keep on buying seeds.

[David Hare-Scott]

It has to grow into quite a large plant and then flower, most of what you see packaged is just sprouts or harvested leaves not the whole plant. I haven't let it go that far so I don't know how long it would take but I would guess several months.

D