My Spring Radish Harvest

Since I don't ever remember eating radishes and how they taste like, I decided to plant 2 rows of radishes just to test them out.
I learned a lot from the 2 rows I planted.

2 major things I learnt.
1. You can eat radish leaves!!
2. Can't be greedy with space, the roots will not grow until you give them lots and lots of space. I don't know how they know they're beside each other but they do.

Here's my final harvest of the 2 rows after thinning out one of the rows earlier.

1. Radish greens
I stumbled upon this by fluke. At first I honestly thought the greens were some sort of lettuce because I didn't label my plants and I had planted a lettuce mix beside the radishes. So for the longest time I thought that it was some sort of prickly lettuce and I couldn't find my radish....
It wasn't until I decided to pull up a plant that I realized that these were my radishes. LOL

I ate the greens raw in sandwiches but I find I like it best cooked!
The greens are prickly so a bit of a pain to wash. It's edible raw and you don't feel it pricking you but just to be safe, it's all nice and soft when you cook it.
Once I realized I had eaten radish leaves, I decided to look them up to be certain you can eat them.
That's when I realized how nutritious they are and the fact that they contain more nutrients then their roots.
The greens are a good source of source of calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamin A, C, K!
When I cook them to eat with noodle soup, I find they taste like Choy Sum. So great fresh substitute.
I tried baking them but didn't like it as much.
So far I like it the best blanched and eaten with noodle or congee.
The best thing about the greens is that it acts like cut and grow lettuce. So for the 1 month you grow the plant for the roots, you can continue to harvest the leaves the whole time for fresh greens.

I like to eat the greens fresh, so throughout the season I clip, wash and cooked right away.
But since I had to harvest the root to stop it from bolting, I quickly rinse and dried in a spinner before I rolled up my greens in newspaper to store in the fridge.
It'll be ok for a couple of days so I'll have to get on eating them. Make sure you dry and separate greens from the root before storage to best keep the leaves.

As of right now, I still haven't ate one of the edible roots I did manage to grow, but I'm thinking I prefer the greens then the root itself. But this led me to point 2.

2. Spacing the radishes.

The ones on the left are from the row that I did not thin out.
The bulbs from the right are from the row that I had thinned out from 6 radishes to 2. The smaller one of the 3 on the right is from the row on the left that I did not thin out. I really thought I had enough room between all the roots since they were spaced out more then the row on the right, but apparently I was wrong.
The roots on the left are not edible. I tried and it was....very bitter and woody.

What I realized is that if you are growing radishes for the greens, go ahead and plant them closer to one an other. And you can have a month long harvest of greens until it gets too hot and the plant starts bolting.
If you want the roots, you do have to space them out.
You'll still get your greens but maybe not as much as if you were to bunch them up.

Great learning, the radishes are fast growing and great for cool season. I'll plant them again in the fall.
For now I will let the broccoli/cabbages and beans take over :)

Categories: Gardening