Gardening expert Monty Don has declared rocket the easiest crop to cultivate at home, highlighting its potential to reduce food bills significantly. As a cut-and-come-again plant, rocket can supply fresh salad continuously without additional cost.
Monty Don's Top Tips for Easy Gardening
With summer officially underway—regardless of the weather—now is the perfect time to enjoy delicious, nutritious salads. Rather than spending nearly £2 on a bag of rocket at the supermarket, Monty Don believes you can grow your own for free. Monty, returning to our screens tonight at 8pm on Gardeners' World, describes rocket as 'probably the easiest of all plants to grow.' Because it is a fast-growing cut-and-come-again crop, you can harvest it repeatedly.
Growing rocket from seed is straightforward, according to Monty: 'If you sow them direct you can leave them where they are. If you sow them in a seed tray you can prick them out and then plant them out about four or five weeks later at whatever spacing you want.' Most salad crops are equally easy to cultivate, he adds: 'If you want something to eat from your garden, that is certainly one of the easiest things you can do, and from that any kind of salad or lettuce grows very easily from seed.'
Ideal Conditions for Rocket
Rocket thrives in cooler temperatures, making spring and autumn the ideal seasons for cultivation. Growing salad from seed is simple, but Monty notes that raising plants from cuttings is not as challenging as many assume: 'Cuttings are sometimes seen as something that can be a little bit tricky, but by and large they're not.' If you have a cherished plant, taking a cutting can serve as an 'insurance policy' against potential mishaps. 'Just the other day I took a batch of salvia cuttings, and they are a really good idea to take because they root easily and they're an insurance. You keep the cuttings protected over winter and it means that if you lose the parent plant, you've got healthy young plants to replace them the next year.'
Other Easy-to-Propagate Plants
Aeoniums are among the simplest plants to propagate from cuttings, Monty adds: 'Simply cut a straight piece of stem with a rosette on the top of it, and then put it to one side and leave it for a week or so to callus over. Then put that into some perlite or even some pure sand, water it, and it will almost inevitably produce roots and a healthy young plant.' Aeoniums can reach heights of around 1.5 metres, with deep red-purple foliage and delicate yellow flowers in late spring. However, they are not the only plants that can help create a flourishing garden without spending money.
Monty also recommends division as a propagation method: 'Another way of producing plants is by division. The two that I would recommend are, first, hardy geraniums. Their roots are particularly fibrous, so you can take a large plant and divide it into as many as half a dozen or even 10 baby plants that you grow on, and that will give you really good coverage in a year or so.' The hosta is another plant that is simple to propagate. With hostas, Monty advises cutting rather than pulling them apart. A sharp spade or even a bread knife will get the job done: 'Cut them into quarters or even slice them like a cake, plant them out and you'll have lots of new hosta plants.'
