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I think one of the biggest reasons people grow their own vegetables is the ability to
pick fresh, high-quality produce when they want it. And it’s always nice to know when
to get out there to pick stuff at its peak.
Well, one of the crops we’re looking at here is what we call one of the cool season
crops. Radishes should be planted in the early spring, take advantage of the cool temperatures,
and moist soils. As the temperatures start getting warmer, and soils get dryer, radishes
don’t fair all that well.
They can be replanted as a fall crop, but during the summertime, we just basically just
let the radishes grow. Here we see radishes that are probably past their prime. And one
we can tell that because of the fact they’ve gotten very tall, as you can see right here,
some of them are starting to show flowers. This is called bolting. When it gets warmer,
they bolt and form a they’ll flower stalk probably about two feet high, white flowers,
and seed pods that are kind of elongated.
Radishes like this really aren’t much good. Even though we might be picking them out of
the ground, and they look fairly nice on the outside, if you cut into them, they get rather
pithy—hollow and kind of spongy—not really that nice, crisp crunch that you’re looking
for.
If you’ve got a crop grass like this, probably the best thing to do is take these out, maybe
substitute a warm season crop—maybe put a row of beans in here that like warm weather.
Radishes should be picked when they look like that.
This is a nice, quality radish, the foliage is about right, the root itself is going to
be a good quality. But again, these—not much there. Take them out. Use the space for
something that is a little more tolerant of the warmer weather other than radishes.