Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is two sources to get growing a plant called Bloody Dock, also known as “Blood Veined Sorrel”.  I first learned about this plant in doing research for pond plants that are edible.  While sold as a pond plant it is more accurate to say that Bloody Dock needs fertile and moist soil and can be grown in a pond on the edges as well.

Your choices to get started with this plant amount to slow and cheap or fast and expensive.  I went the expensive route but I am now  going to also go the cheap route with seed and try to make a ton of plants that way too.

• The expensive option it to buy well started plants you can get them from a seller called Florida Aquatic Nursery Here. (Currently not in stock though)
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• The cheap route is to buy seeds as you might imagine and the best deal on Amazon is from a seller called Ohio Heirloom Seeds for 4.49 a package.

Side Note – You may really want to check out Ohio Heirloom Seeds full line up of stuff, they have some really cool hard to get things.  And check out the other offerings from Florida Aquatic Nursery as well, again cool stuff you just don’t find everyday.

Okay so back to Bloody Dock and why I love this plant, well because it hits my big four.

1. Hard to Kill
2. Tastes Good
3. Perennial
4. Looks Good

What else can you ask for?  So when I got my 4 plants they looked great, I planted them and by that evening I was pretty angry, they all looked dead.  The leaves just went flat.  The next day a few perked back up, I cut the other leaves off, kept them moist and in shade.  By the end of that week they were going full on again.  About a month later, this is what they looked like!

That one plant will produce well over a dozen divisions in early fall making the 20 dollar price tag easier to swallow.

Since first buying plants I started using seeds.  I won’t ever buy Bloody Dock as a plant again.  The seeds germinate like mad and frankly this stuff is a “useful weed”.  Give it a good place to grow, basically some fertility and stays moist, and you really can’t stop it from growing and multiplying.

So should you go with seeds or plants?  The choice is yours really, but propagation from seed is about as easy as seep propagation gets.

Using this plant as food is easy as well.  You can use it raw in salads or gently sautéed like spinach or any other green.  While this stuff is good eating like many greens it is a bit sharp on its own, but blend it with a few others and it is just amazing.  Also it is the young to baby leaves that are the best tasting and more impressive and hence sought heavily by chefs.

It is a spreading perennial so making more plants is easy, dig up a well established plant, separate it into smaller parts (divisions) and replant.  Even if it looks bad, new growth will soon pop up.   Note that this is best done in spring or early fall after the high heat is done for the year.  But you can do this in summer too, the key is do it in pots, and keep it in shade until the shock passes.

Again this stuff is tough to kill, what it needs though is constant moisture, which is why it is so great as a pond plant but it will do great in a well watered garden or wicking bed, on a shady edge that gets morning sun, etc.

So consider picking up some seeds or plants today and again check out both Ohio Heirloom Seeds and Florida Aquatic Nursery as well. I have ordered from both sellers with great results.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com