What it is
Arugula (Eruca vesicaria) is in the Brassicaceae (Mustard) family. Peppery salad green that's ready in weeks. Cut it young and it regrows; let it bolt and the flowers are edible too.
How to grow it
It wants full sun to part shade, water it even, and give it average soil. Target a soil pH around 6.0–7.0. Space plants about 4–6 in apart. Expect roughly 30–40. Cool-season.
How it's used
Arugula is used: raw salad; flowers edible.
🔎 How to identify it
- Deeply lobed leaves
- Low rosette
- Cream flowers with purple veins
Edibility
How to grow & propagate arugula
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate arugula
The cabbage family is a cool-season seed crop. Start the heading types (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower) in trays 5–6 weeks before you want them in the ground; sow the fast roots and greens (radish, turnip, mustard, arugula) straight into the bed. They all cross with each other readily, so if you're saving seed, only let one variety of a given species flower at a time.
Growing arugula in Texas
Give it full sun to part shade and average soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
This is a cool-season crop. On the Texas Gulf Coast that means your real windows are fall and late winter, not summer — sow as the heat breaks in September–October and again in late winter, and you'll harvest through our mild winters while the rest of the country is frozen out.
In a container it'll dry faster than in the ground, so check the top inch of soil daily in summer; pots on a hot Texas patio can need water every single day.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 30–40 before you're harvesting. Harvest at peak and keep harvesting — most vegetables produce harder the more you pick, and one left to over-mature tells the plant its job is done. The part you're after: leaves and flowers.
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.