Meredith

this is radish (sort of)

Discoveries, Foliage, Seasons, Vegetables No Responses »

Feb 062010

A survivor kind of radish.

I have put it through a lot. My beautiful autumn radishes got planted late because of a work deadline, and then grew pitiably slowly in the cloudy, wet, chilly days at the end of October, making me give them up for lost. I did harvest a few of the abundant greens for an attempt at radish leaf pesto (not recommended), but I certainly wasn’t going to bother to thin the entire patch when I was sure the exercise would be pointless, wasted effort.

However, our first killing frost came more than a month later than expected, and it’s generally been a mild season, so the radish tops stayed bright green and healthy. After I’d prepped our small raised bed for spring radish planting, it seemed fitting that I clean out the remaining failed crop and compost it so that I could mulch the fall extension bed.

To be honest, I felt a little sad to be doing it.

Imagine my surprise when the very first seedling I yanked out of the ground was a Daikon radish which had managed to grow to an impressive depth of four and a half inches and a diameter of a half an inch.

Of course, this size is not at all impressive for a Daikon radish in general. But it is astounding for a neglected, crowded stand of radishes, ignored and allowed to duke it out amongst themselves all through the dormant season. I immediately set to thinning the remaining radishes, leaving about 25 Daikon seedlings with plenty of room to grow fat and sassy if they are inclined to do so in the spring-ish weather we’re having.

I also thinned out a pitiful row of Misato Rose radishes, those exotic-looking beauties sometimes called “Watermelon” radishes, with medium green skins and gorgeous rosy pink flesh. There were only three of edible size in my thinnings, and most of the plants seemed not to have enjoyed the recent rains, with several sporting rotted leaves at their bases.

There were a few China Rose radishes, as well, with their pretty, neon pink skin and white flesh. [See pitiful, stunted example above.] I will be interested to see if any of these fatten up now that they’re not crowded. Apparently, this variety can grow up to five inches in diameter. That is one huge radish.

(Envisioning a radish five inches around makes me think of the huge, pampered, perfect radish that Junior Gorg grew on Fraggle Rock. I think he’d named his prize radish Geraldine and become quite fond of her company, and he was devastated when some intrepid Fraggle stole it from his garden. Does anyone else remember Junior’s pride and joy?)

At any rate, the Spanish Black radishes appear to have rejected my treatment of them thoroughly, and are not expected to recover although I gave them space to do so, just in case.

I took all the barely-edible-sized roots inside, along with a considerable quantity of mud. (Over the winter, it appears I forgot the first rule of harvest: wash dirt off outside first! F. and I learned this rule the hard way last year. I’ll have to get back into the habit, and quickly, or the state of my home, and especially my kitchen floor, will drive me insane.)

F. immediately plucked loose a plump Daikon dangling from the mass in my arms and rushed to the sink to wash it. He was biting into it as I entered the kitchen. He is actually the reason I plant so many radishes, in both spring and fall, as he cannot get enough of the things… yet thinks the version found in an American grocery store has exactly no flavor and thus is not worth purchasing. Consequently, he hungers after radishes, a cool-season crop we can only grow briefly here, for much of the year.

To me, a radish is pretty much a radish. Yes, the ones to come out of our garden last spring had a nice, fresh crispness and a slightly more bright flavor than the grocery version. Still, nothing to write home about.

After biting into that Daikon this afternoon, though, I might just have to revise my opinion. This long, ivory, tapered root was fantastic, spicy and dramatic and almost earthy, with a high note at the finish that left me wanting more than the small pile that had resulted from my afternoon of thinning. Yum. Cross your fingers the ones left in the earth grow up to normal size in spite of my neglect.

“This is radish (sort of)” is dedicated to Bangchik, for whom radishes are an exotic plant and whose post, “is this radish?” inspired the title. I’m going to follow along at his blog, My little vegetable garden, as he attempts to grow these new-to-him vegetables for the first time. I hope his results are better than these, and I suspect they will be. He’s a great gardener, and spring radishes are relatively fool-proof.

Of course, some folks might say that about autumn radishes, too.

PDF

redirected

Soil, Weather No Responses »

Feb 052010

Late-breaking update to the previous post:

F. stood at the kitchen window after dinner staring out at our new river with a grim expression on his face.

We’d had a round-table discussion at dinner about the various options for shoring up the wall, diverting the stream’s flow, and/or blocking it where the majority of the water was originating at the forest’s edge, perhaps urging it to join the small lake that has developed at the side of the house.

My sister was of the opinion that attempting to divert the flow might cause another stream to form elsewhere in the plot, with potentially worse consequences. She also pointed out to me that only two garlic bulbs are completely exposed, and both of them are still upright in the stream, their roots hanging on somehow, so the actual crop damage is likely to be minimal — although I did remind her they’re predicting two more days of this crazy downpour, and the stream could get quite a bit wider and deeper in that time.

I didn’t want anyone touching the wall at all. The portion that has held up is holding back a great deal of my precious soil, amendments, and compost, and I intend to salvage them later rather than lose them to a washout in the lawn.

Other than that, I was all for any attempts to save my garlic and my plot of earth.

F. announced he was going outside to see what could be done. I asked if he wanted any help, secretly hoping he would say “no,” because it was cats-and-dogs time out there and almost dark already.

“It’s probably too late to do much,” he said morosely, shaking his head. Mumbling “if onlies,” he stepped out into the dreary, wet twilight.

And then I promptly forgot about the whole thing, forgot my sweetheart was out in the mud jungle that my backyard has become. (Hey, I was clearing away the remains of dinner and folding laundry with pauses to read entertaining blog comments! Don’t judge.) I was busy trying to decide if tomorrow I make corn-&-potato chowder or bean-&-barley soup when my sister called out, “Look what he’s done!”

Sure enough, F. had diverted three different water flows, two originating at forest’s edge and one within the garden itself, to converge directly on my naked garden path. It really does look like a small creek now, in places two-and-a-half feet wide, and at the streams’ conjunction, rather deep and pooling beautifully before cascading down again.

Maybe Mother Nature is hinting that what we really needed in the Victory Garden was a water feature?

I tried to photograph the miniature cascading rapids for you, but moving water after dark is beyond either my camera’s capability or my skill level. Probably both. I only managed a shot of a flat and not-too-deep portion at the very top of the new river’s trajectory. You can see the current building momentum as the land begins to tilt downhill on the right-hand side.

You can also see that once the mulch has been washed away from my garden paths, all that is left is bright red clay. That clay is part of the reason I have a new water feature where I used to have a garden path. It doesn’t drain well and becomes easily saturated. It’s perfect for lining a creekbed, but terrible for growing vegetables without major improvement. (We’ve tried our best, but there’s only so much soil amendment one can do in a single growing season on a limited budget using hand tools.)

I grew up thinking of this as Georgia red clay, but we’re no longer in Georgia, and that distinctive earth is still part of my life. An Italian visitor this summer said in fascination, rubbing it between her fingers, “But it’s as dark as blood!”

While I wouldn’t go that far, I sometimes wonder if red clay is in my blood; I know it is in my heart. I do love it, even though it can cause some serious headaches and pain sometimes.

PDF

the weight of sunshine

Bulbs, Seasons, Vegetables, Weather, seeds No Responses »

Feb 052010

Two ‘Miragreen’ garden peas in the bottom of their planting hole.

Wednesday morning, as I washed my kitchen windows, I felt the warmth of the sun on my left shoulder. It was not that anemic light I’ve grown accustomed to over the winter months, but the rays had persistence and strength — even weight, as if the sun were laying a gentle hand on me. But of course, this particular hand has an incomparable touch, comprised of equal parts youth, generosity, new love, and giddy delight.

Later that afternoon when my sister had joined me, she suddenly stood up from where she’d been bent over sprinkling pea inoculant down a freshly prepared row. Her brow was furrowed as though she were thinking Big Thoughts.

“What?” I said, seeing the look. I continued to hoe up stubborn winter weeds that had taken hold in the nearby pathway.

“The sun,” she said slowly, and paused, squinting up at the sky.

“I know,” I said immediately, excited that someone else had noticed it, felt its subtle weight.

But that wasn’t what she’d noticed. Not exactly.

“It’s yellow,” she said. “The winter white is fading out of it.”

I had to smile. My sister, the visual artist, had noticed the fine seasonal gradations of the sunlight’s color, whereas I was focused on the feeling of it striking my skin. There is nothing new about this pattern at all. We may have been playing the same variations on a theme since childhood, actually.

Still, it was good to get confirmation that the change was real, not just wishful thinking on my part.

But just in case we got any ideas that this newborn, slightly more golden sunlight was here to stay, two reminders of its inconstancy arrived in quick succession. One came in the person of our friendly UPS delivery man walking around the side of the house to find us (voices carry in our little, secluded hollow). When he saw my sister kneeling in the mulch and me up to my wrists in dirt, he laughed and said that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be so easily “tricked” into believing spring was here.

What he didn’t realize, however, is that I am ready and willing to be misled if it will result in another glorious day like that so early in the growing season.

And the other began yesterday evening and is continuing this morning: flash-flood inducing rains.

Remember how a river ran through it? The river is back in full force, its rippling current carrying away the soil, compost, and four inches of heavy mulch that I’d put down to try and hold the land in place, sweeping away even F.’s careful attempt at a retaining wall at the lower end.

Garlic bulbs lie exposed on the surface of the bed, stark white dots on the banks of the ever-widening stream seen clearly from the newly-cleaned kitchen window. And I’d just said on our sunny day out how proud of them I was, how quickly they’d recovered from their trauma and put out new green shoots.

Sigh. I do feel in need of a sunny pat on the shoulder when I see the ongoing destruction, part deux.

PDF

Older Entries Newer Entries

Meredith

this is radish (sort of)

redirected

the weight of sunshine

Quote of the Week

Recent Posts

From the Archives

Who am I?

Where does my garden grow?

My Gallery of Photographs: Postcards and Prints Available

Blogroll

Categories

Archives

Need to find something specific?

Tags