The popularity of watercress in the UK is growing so fast that this season marks the first time leading supplier Vitacress will have to import alongside UK supplies over the summer in order to meet demand.
"At the moment, 25 per cent of the watercress we are supplying is grown in the UK," said Steve Rothwell, Vitacress's production and technical director. "This will go up to 50 per cent by mid-April and 90-plus per cent by early May. We are seeing such strong demand for watercress that we will continue with our Portuguese supplies throughout the summer for the first time."
Dr Rothwell attributes the boom to product promotion. "It is a sign of the success of the Watercress Alliance promotions that we are seeing good demand," he said. "We have problems building new watercress beds in the UK because of environmental concerns, so the short-term fix is to import more."
The peppery leaf's performance is also outstripping that of other salads. "Demand and sales are ahead of other leaves, such as baby-leaf spinach," said Dr Rothwell.
Watercress overwinters and withstands extremes of weather over the cold season well. "March and April can sometimes be the time to watch as the cold can delay the seedlings," said Dr Rothwell. "But so far conditions are good and we are also off to an early start with good conditions for drilling of our other crops."
Vitacress expects to begin cutting its baby-leaf spinach crop between the end of April and early May, depending on the weather. Other baby-leaf lettuce lines will begin cutting in late May and early June as will herbs.
The company is the UK's largest supplier of watercress and produces 1,000 tonnes in the UK: some 10 million pillow packs.
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