Radish are one of our favorite early season crops. It’s a super fast grower, typically producing in just a short three weeks. It’s a great way to get early season produce and they are super easy to grow.
Now is definitely the time to be growing them as their potential season is quite short. Radish are particularly heat sensitive and will go straight to flowering once summer gets into full swing. We typically find we can’t sow them any later than early June, so the season for them is extremely limited. If you’re looking for something a bit more tolerant of heat, Daikon radish is a bit more heat tolerant and comes in around 60 days or so.
We typically sow 1-2 weeks prior to last frost, then come in a couple weeks later and re-sow any seeds that didn’t pop. They are also excellent crops for succession planting, typically once a week or so over the early season.
You can also sow them around first frost in the fall for a second crop. They are quite cold tolerant, easily handling those first few frosts. This is a great way to use up garden space where you’ve all ready harvested you plants.
There are tons of radish varieties out there, we grow a huge variety of different kinds. You can find white, red, pink, brown, purple, and even multi-color. Some are more or less “zesty,” depending on whether that’s your kind of thing.
While we love eating them fresh and in salads, the bulk of our crop is fermented. This allows us to have fresh radish over the entire summer, typically being used as a side dish for many of our meals.
