Description

Heirloom Herb. Strong tasting, spinach-like greens with delicious nut-like flavour that are quite popular in salads or cooked like spinach. We recommend picking young shoots when 5-15 cm (2-6″) long for best fresh salad flavour while the older foliage makes an interesting steamed vegetable. Generally the first shoots can be harvested from plants about 30 days after germination. If you only remove younger shoots from main stem, plants will continue to offer foliage until blooming. It is interesting to note that plants vary in leaf shape and earliness of flowering and as with many greens, a cool season is best for this plant. Plants can mature to 90 cm (3′) tall. Arugula is also known as Roquette or Rocketsalad. Annual.

How to Grow

Sow seed directly outdoors in a sunny site with average soil in mid-to-late May. Seed can also be started indoors in a soil-less mix 4-6 weeks before last frost date. Keep temperature at 21 C (70 F) for the 5-10 day germination period, then grow on at a slightly cooler temperature before hardening off and transplanting outside after the danger of frost has passed. Sow seed 3 mm (1/8″) deep and 2.5 cm (1″) apart then thin to 30 cm (12″) apart in the garden.