May, 1909 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
201 
Watercress Culture in France 
By Jacques Boyer 
HE watercress (nasturtium officinale) 
grows spontaneously on the banks of shal- 
low running streams. In former times the 
markets were supplied entirely with wild 
watercress, which was sometimes gathered 
at great distances, but this cruciferous plant, 
which possesses stimulating and blood-puri- 
fying properties, is now cultivated on a very large scale in 
the suburbs of large cities. This rather picturesque variety 
of gardening is conducted in trenches flooded with water, 
by a system which originated in the environs of Dresden and 
Erfurt, and was introduced into France about the year 1811. 
The most celebrated watercress farms in France are situ- 
ated near Provins, at the sources of the rivers Voulzie 
and Durteint, and at St. Gratien and its neighboring villages, 
near Paris. In establishing a plantation, the first operation 
is the excavation, in well-watered meadow land, of parallel 
trenches 150 to 250 feet long, eight to thirteen feet wide, 
with an average depth of sixteen or twenty inches, and a very 
gentle slope (1 to 800 or 1,000). Each trench is separated 
from the next by a strip of grass about a yard in width. 
The first trench is supplied with water directly from a stream 
or artesian well. On reaching the end of the trench the water 
flows through an underground tile pipe to the second trench, 
from the other end of which it flows through a similar pipe 
into the third trench, and so on. The water thus pursues a 
serpentine course through the field, its flow being regulated 
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by gates at each end of the course. Experience has proved 
that a trench 150 feet long and ten feet wide requires twelve 
or thirteen gallons of water per minute. 
The plantation having once been established, some culti- 
vators confine their attention to renewing it occasionally 
by cuttings. They select young, vigorous shoots bearing ad- 
ventitious roots and plant them in little bunches, with the 
dibber, in the trenches at intervals of from two to four 
inches. ‘The earth is then heaped up about the shoots, and 
the trenches are flooded to a depth of two inches. The 
water level is gradually raised as the plants increase in 
height, care being taken to avoid submerging them entirely. 
But if abundant crops are desired it is better to sow water- 
cress seed every year. The old plants are raked off and the 
mud is removed with an implement which is called a rabot, 
or plane, and consists of a board fixed tranversely on the end 
of a pole. The dry bottom of the trench is next strewn with 
well-rotted stable manure, or with superphosphate of lime, 
each acre receiving about three tons of manure or nine hun- 
dred pounds of superphosphate. The beds are now ready 
for sowing. As the seed of watercress is very fine, an ounce 
containing more than 120,000 seeds and a grain more than 
250, the sower stands on a board thrown across the trench 
and holds his hand as low as possible, in order to prevent 
the seed being blown away or distributed irregularly by the 
wind. Each year, as a rule, half the beds are re-seeded. 
Two weeks after sowing, when the young plants are well 
A watercress plantation 
