radish – The Kitchen Garden Blog

June in the garden

It would be hard to summarise what we have been up to in the vegetable garden lately, so I took my crappy phone over with me to take some photos to show what we have been up to…

The broadbeans are doing really well. These I sowed as seed last autumn and we have already harvested a large amount, some small pods, some big that have been shelled.

This week we have harvested: broadbeans, parsley, Swiss chard (or perpetual leaf spinach), rocket, lettuce, radishes, cucumber, garlic, tree cabbage and wild strawberries.

After trying sooooo many times to grow spinach and carrots this year, I have started again with fresh seeds – fingers crossed it will work!

I also planted out my pumpkins today, the last crop to go outside. Now I just have to get a serious move on with my sweet potatoes and some of my tomatoes need larger pots too…

Potatoes are looking as lovely as ever. I think I should just stick to potatoes. They seem to be all I can manage!

We have had really bad slug and snail damage this year – even the onions have suffered, which is very unusual. Protection has been put in place to save our babies at the cost of bug life 😦 There are only so many crops you can lose before you have to take action.

Summer Squash grown from seed and planted on

Our lovely runner beans are growing every day. The ones in the front row of this picture are the ones that we planted two years ago and left the roots in the ground. We covered them up to protect them from the frost over winter and now they have grown beautifully yet again. There are another two trenches of beans in the background, and another couple in the garden. Got to love beans.

Grown from seed sweetcorn. Our neighbour kindly gave us another couple of batches from her own garden too. One might produce…?

Cheeky self-seeding orach growing among the broadbeans

Other than that, it has been weeding and feeding non-stop here. Working on clay soil at another garden has made me realise how hungry our plants must be on sandy soil. Compared to the other garden, ours need constant watering and manuring to keep them fit and strong.

March – sowing and growing

There are too many plants that can be started off indoors/outdoors in March to name! But here are a few to get you started…

Carrots – Carrots – sown one trench outside under fleece

Spinach – Salad – Spinach – planted out ‘Turaco’ spinach sown last autumn in a cold frame with fleece and started off indoors ‘Barbados’ and ‘Emelia’, onto ‘Samish’ soon…

Lettuce- Salad – Lettuce – planted out lettuce sown last winter in the cold frame with the spinach and sown some seeds indoors

Radishes – Salad – Radish – sown outdoors under fleece between other crops

Celery – Celery – batch sown indoors

Celeriac – Celeriac – ”

Courgettes – Courgettes – sown indoors

Squashes – have yet to plant ‘Honey Bear’ and ‘Sunburst’

Quinoa – Quinoa – batch sown indoors

Chickpeas – Sown indoors, first time trying them this year!

Broad beans – Broad Beans – ready to plant out under fleece

Peas – started off indoors but can be sown directly now – post hopefully coming soon…

Okra – Okra – couple damped off so planted some more indoors

Rocket – Salad – Rocket – sown indoors, not doing so well…

Watercress – sown indoors

Herbs – sown the parsley and coriander so far

Fenugreek – damped off, need to sow some more indoors

Cucumbers – Cucumbers – sown indoors, doing best at moment, please stay that way!

Tomatoes – germinated very well indoors

Potatoes – time to think about planting them outdoors under a lot of earth and some cover

Turnips – just sown some

Purple Sprouting Broccoli – just sown some (as well as some more Calabrese Broccoli) indoors AND just harvested first batch of last year’s crop the other night to have with some of the last dug up potatoes from last season with baked beans, cheese and frozen homegrown runner beans – yum!

Leeks – Leeks – indoors

Spring Onions – indoors

Beetroot – indoors, on my list

Cabbages – Cabbages – ‘Red Rodeo’, ‘Advantage’, ‘Caserta’ – sown indoors

Brussels Sprouts and Brukale – Brussels Sprouts – quickly sow before it gets too late

Kale – The last of the Kale

Sweet Corn – on my list but I know from experience that I can still get away with sowing it in May, indoors

Rhubarb – Rhubarb – time to feed and start forcing

Fruit Trees/Bushes – time to feed!

There are bound to be plenty more veggies to sow/plant out as we plough on through the first month of spring. Temperatures are finally warming up but hang onto some fleece – the fruit trees might be lured into a false spring, deadly for blossom and fruit production… Make sure anything you sow outside/ plant out is wrapped up under cover, nice and snuggly. It will be a shock to the system if they are exposed to Britain’s ‘spring time’ too early!

FLOWERS TO SOW INDOORS:

French Marigolds

Cosmos

Viola

Lavender

Geraniums

Calendulas

Lupins

Sweet Peas – they are ready to plant out under cover

There are BILLIONS more…

February Sowings

List of edibles you could start sowing indoors in February:

Cucumbers: Passandra, Marketmore, Crystal Lemon. For more information on planting cucumbers, visit my cucumber page: Cucumbers

Calabrese Broccoli – Ironman F1 – Calabrese Broccoli

Cauliflower – All Year Round

Spinach – Emilia and Barbados Salad – Spinach

Peppers – Californian Wonder

Aubergine – Black Beauty Aubergine

Rocket – Salad – Rocket

Onions – bulbs (outdoors under cover) and seeds

Shallots – seeds

Brussels Sprouts and Brukale – Maximus and Petite Posy Brussels Sprouts

Lettuce Salad – Lettuce

Tomatoes – Shirley, Gardner’s Delight, Sungold, Losetto…

Radishes – Salad – Radish

First early potatoes (outdoors under cover)- e.g. Swift, Red Duke of York, Epicure, Rocket The MIGHTY Potato

Garlic (outdoors) Garlic

Herbs indoors

Beetroot – Bolthardy

Spring Onions

Cabbages – Caserta

Oriental greens – e.g. komatsuna, pak choi, mizuna, mitzuna)

Okra

Cape Gooseberries

Rhubarb (forcing time) Rhubarb

Broadbeans – Masterpiece Green Long Pod, Aquadulce Broad Beans

I’m bound to have missed lots – anyone got any ideas to share??

Salad – Radish

These little, colorfully red vegetables are quick and easy to grow, attributed as the ideal starting point for encouraging children to garden so that they do not get impatient!

Radishes are assumed to have first been grown wild in Southeast Asia, thousands of years ago. Ancient writings in Egypt suggest that they were cultivated before the pyramids were even constructed, suggesting that this little red vegetable has been around a pretty long time, developing over the years to become the little red vegetable we love today. In Ancient Greece, radishes were revered so much that gold replicas were made to impersonate them as an offering to the god Apollo. Radishes first appeared in England during the 16th century and are actually referred to in Shakespeare’s work in ‘King Henry IV’.

Radish patch in April after being sown in February 2016

Radishes are a fast germinating and growing crop that can be sown in soils averaging 10C-18C. During the winter months, one must allow 6-7 weeks for the crop to mature but as the temperatures rise and the sun (hopefully) shines, you can pick your radishes less than a month after sowing. As the cycle of growing and harvesting is so quick, to have a continuous supply of radishes throughout the year they should be sown successionally every fortnight.

Radishes grow best in full sun with a soil PH 6.5-7.0, making it an ideal vegetable for my sandy soil. From my own experience, I have discovered that radishes become plumper and redder when sown in well-fed soil. I have planted them this year in ground that was used for potatoes last year that has been freshly fed with well-rotted manure and mulch and they have done marvelously. I am now sowing them between other vegetables as a catch-crop as they are an ideal companion plant (they have few pests, are small and quickly harvested and moved out-of-the-way from the other crops. This saves space in the garden rather than dedicating one large patch to them that they do not need. The only plant I have heard of that disagrees with radishes is hyssop).

Daikon or Mooli radish are winter oilseed radishes from Asia. These are long, white radishes instead of the small red ones we are used to buying in our local supermarkets. These varieties are important parts of East, Southeast and South Asian cuisine that are steadily becoming more popular in England as we branch out on our exotic vegetables with funny names.

‘Mooli’ or ‘Daikon’ Radishes (Image from Mr Fothergills website)

This year, I sowed my first lot of radishes in February under the cover of fleece. They were ready for picking by early April. Seed packets recommend sowing radishes from February to September, early and perhaps late sowings made under cover to optimise the health of the plant in case of frost damage preventing the growth.

The types I have grown recently are: ‘Cherry Bella’, ‘Esmerelda’ and ‘Polenza’. All of these have had the same taste, appearance and success in growing.

Plant radishes 1/2 inch deep, 2 inches apart. Keep them well watered and fed to get a great harvest. If you do not water them regularly, the roots you want to eat will split and if they are not fed very well, they will not grow to a reasonable size. They can be stored in the ground and picked and used fresh from the garden but the longer they are left, the ‘woodier’ the texture of their skin will be. If this happens, cut them very finely or peel them, otherwise experiment with cooking them in a dish.

Radish roots are most often used in salads though the tops can be eaten too. They can be sautéed as a side dish or thrown in a stir fry to wilt. They are also often included in soups. Raw radish has a peppery taste (caused by glucoseinolates and the enzyme myrosinase combining when chewed) and a crisp texture, adding flavor and seasoning to your salads. ‘Veg Patch’, ‘River Cottage’, suggests using the peppery radishes in a raita alongside a curry: slice 200g radishes into a bowl. Combine 100g goats cheese with 300g natural yoghurt, a little at a time. Fold in the radishes and a couple or tsp of mint, if you would like, and season with a little salt and pepper. Eat it alongside a curry or use as a dip for naan bread, poppadoms or chappatis.

Radishes are a good source of fibre, vitamins C and B6, folic acid, potassium, iron (not so much, but a little), calcium, magnesium, copper and riboflavin.