Rocket var. Astra

Description

Eruca sativa

Astra is an easy-to-grow salad rocket with a strong, distinctive flavour. Plants do not heart up, so it is best to harvest individual leaves as wanted. The leaves can be harvested at any age, and until the plant goes to flower new ones will continue to regrow as a cut-and-grow-again crop. Unfortunately, the plants are quick to bolt, but this doesn’t mean harvesting must stop – the leaves can still be used by picking them off the flowering stems. Even the flowers can be eaten; they’re deliciously sweet with nectar when picked just as they are opening up.

Rocket is especially good as a salad ingredient, and highly-prized as a cooked green in Asian dishes.

Sow March to September for outdoor crops and September to October for overwintering in tunnels and greenhouses. As the plants do not form hearted plants they do not need to be spaced widely – a spacing of 15cm between them each way is fine.

Approx. number of seeds per pack: 700