Growing Watercress in an EarthBox

The green beans I planted in May were so good, I started more plants in early August after I cleared out the old strawberry plants from my self watering planters. I have one self watering planter from gardeners.com and an EarthBox. However, the green beans in the EarthBox all died of rot. It didn't look like disease, so I felt the soil and realized that it was way too waterlogged. I don't remember what kind of soil mixture I used but I do remember that it was something I mixed myself the year before. Somehow, within a year's time, the soil had degraded to become heavy and waterlogged.

Rather than dumping out the soil into a landfill and buying more, I decided not to fight the wet conditions and plant some watercress. It wasn't until mid to late August that I got around to ordering watercress seeds, so the seeds went into the EarthBox some time at the end of August or beginning of September. I had no expectations since watercress is known to like specific conditions -- good sun but not too hot, cool roots and non-stagnant, running water. Nothing happened for a while. After about a full week, tiny little watercress sprouts started appearing all over the top of the soil. Watercress seeds are tiny and are supposed to be just pressed into the soil. I had scattered half of the seed packet all over the surface of the EarthBox soil so there were many sprouts very close together.

I went out every couple of days for the next week to thin out the sprouts. By the time they were two weeks old, they were about 1 inch to 1 1/2 inches high and i had done the last thinning, leaving little baby plants about 4 inches apart. For the past week, they have been growing steadily. I expect that in another couple of weeks, I should have my first harvest. Hopefully I can have a couple of harvests before this year's first frost.