Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Let Me Radish You!


Fresh Picked Radishes from my garden

I still haven't weeded my cold crops. My beets, carrots, radishes and lettuce, chard and spinach are all surrounded by very healthy and fast growing weeds. I plan to get out there tomorrow after I am done with my massage clients in the morning. Tonight I harvested the first few radishes of the season shown in the photo above. They are called French Breakfast radishes. I like them because of their mild flavor, their cylindrical shape and their two-toned red and white color. The cylindrical shape allows them to be sliced in nicely uniform little discs for salads.

I brought them inside and washed them up:


Clean beautiful little radishes!

The radish greens are also edible, and some folks add them to salads, but I really don't care for their taste, so I just save them to feed to my chickens. They enjoy them very much.

I do enjoy munching on a few very fresh radishes as an hors d'oeuvre with a glass of merlot. I think they taste best fresh from the garden with the green leaves still attached:


Wine and fresh picked veggie ~ a gardener's delight

Just the beginning of many garden joys this season! I plan to share them all with you.


© Copyright 2008 Mountain Harvest Basket

5 comments:

Hardware Bob said...

Cute title, and the radishes are very beautiful like you said, and attest to your gardener talents.

You know I don't like radishes much, and I know you slip them secretly into salads like Mom does with onions.

I am impresed with your harvest so soon in the growing season. Half my garden has been consumed by that pesky gopher.

Farmer Jen said...

Hi Bob,
Thanks for noticing my play on words in the post title. I was hoping that someone would.

I would never slip radishes into your salad...maybe your Mom would, but not me...(wink, wink)

I think you will need to use gopher wire or gopher cages this year to protect your garden veggies. I would hate to have the tomato seedlings I am carefully cultivating for you to plant be destroyed in an instant by a hungry gopher. That would make us both very sad.

Anonymous said...

The radishes are lovely....I also am not a lover of the veggie but they are pretty.....Onions are now another subject!!!!! We are sneaky, aren't we........

Danni said...

Hey!! You've got a new commenter!! And...Hardware Bob beat me again...not only to commenting but to commenting on your witty-ness :-)
I love your title, too...ha ha, very funny. But I have a question. How come my radishes don't look nearly as healthy as yours do????!!! Mine are, maybe, half the size. What's up with that?

Farmer Jen said...

Hi NF Mom,
Thanks for the supportive comments. From your writing, you sound like one of my regular anonymous commenters who now has a new cool secret ID. Good!

Hi Danni,
Yes, I think that NF Mom is really Bob's Mom with her new online ID. Can't think of who else it might be.

Thank you too for the compliment on my "witty" post title. These things just pop into my head and I just write them in the blog. Silly me.

Different types of radishes look and grow differently. These are two toned cylindrical ones that I planted from seed on April 19th and just started harvesting this week so they are 4 weeks old now. Their roots measure from 1 inch to about 2 1/2 inches long. They are maybe 3/4" in diameter.

The most common radish we see in the grocery stores are the round red ones. Sometimes I grow Cherry Belles which are round red ones, but I prefer the French Breakfast radish. The first year I grew them I grew Cherry Belles. The green leafy tops grew very tall and the radish roots were small and tough. I learned that it was because I had a high amount of nitrogen in my garden soil which is great for the green leafy things, but not so nutritious for the roots. They can usually be harvested 3 weeks after planting the seeds. What kind of radishes are you growing? Show us a photo please.