The skinniest carrot ever (and two decent daikon radishes)

The daikon radishes shown above are volunteers from a spring crop. They grew bigger in the spring, but these are still a decent size. Recently, the deer have discovered the crop and are munching away at the top growth, so I don't know if the roots still in the ground will get much bigger.

The carrots were sown in September. I've since learned that University of Tennessee does not recommend carrots as a fall crop here. If I want to try them in fall next year, I'll probably try sowing a month earlier and try to do a better job thinning out the seedlings.

(Actually, I didn't do any thinning at all of the carrot seedlings, so I've set the bar pretty low to do a 'better' job next time.)

Happy early Thanksgiving!

Veggies Til the Cowpeas Come Home

This might just look like a hot mess, but it's actually hundreds of daikon seeds ripening on some of my biggest roots. The pods themselves are edible when green and younger, but now I think they're probably only good for seed-saving.

In my first year or two of gardening, I tried growing a lot of veggies in our solid clay soil.

Frustrated by my lack of success, I mostly gave up and focused on ornamentals.

Recently though, I've started tiptoeing my way back into growing food.

I've had some fair success with basil - including a couple of volunteer basil plants the last couple of years.

Last fall and again this spring, I planted daikon radishes (Raphanus sativus) from Sow True Seed. This crop plays multiple roles - the leaves function as a cover crop, the roots are edible, the seedpods are edible and any roots left in place should hopefully decay and thus work as a no-till soil amendment. The fall crop did OK last year despite a drought and the spring crop this year did even better, producing good-sized roots and literally thousands of seedpods.

I ate some of the pods (found I liked them best raw), but ultimately ended up just composting most of them. I'm allowing the pods to mature on some of the biggest roots to save seed and/or let them naturalize a bit.

Meanwhile, as the radishes bolt and fade in the summer heat, I've started some 'Southern Brown Sugar' cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) - also from Sow True Seed - one of my favorite seed companies!) for the first time.

I'm very impressed with the germination on these seeds. I think almost all my seeds sprouted in under a week and seem to be off to a strong start!

Cowpeas looking good so far!

And then there's the tropical roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), which I sowed in the garden about a month ago. Germination was a bit slow on these and the seedlings are fairly slow-growing. I'm a little worried that I should have started them indoors and that they won't have time to mature and flower in a single season. (I believe they're actually perennials in zone 9 and warmer, but they'll almost certainly behave like annuals here in zone 6-7.)

To read about roselle's edible uses, you can check out this publication from Purdue University.

Grow strong, little hibiscus!

Some June highlights - oakleaf hydrangea, black-eyed Susan, daikon radish, golden groundsel, anise hyssop and Carefree Beauty

Oak leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) panicle fading to pink

Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan), first time growing this native wildflower

Super impressed with the ability of daikon radish (Raphanus sativus) to form substantial roots on my solid clay soil. Many of the daikons are bolting now - making surprisingly beautiful lavender flower spikes that attract pollinators. Pollinated flowers then turn into edible seed pods!

In my continuing search for native groundcover candidates, I think golden groundsel (Packera obovata) is a keeper. This beauty is evergreen in winter and had pretty yellow flower spikes earlier in the season. 

In my experience, Agastache foeniculum (anise hyssop) is one of the best perennials for attracting both pollinators (to the flowers) and birds (for the seeds). It's a beautiful plant to boot and self-sows moderately to provide a nice amount of new seedlings over time. It can look a bit tired in the heat of summer and I haven't tried growing it in all-day blazing sun, but overall it does amazingly well here in shade or partial sun (either morning or afternoon), especially considering this plant is native to Canada and the northern Plains (Montana to Wisconsin)!

After some pruning, Carefree Beauty rose is blooming again.

Daikon as Clay Soil Amendment (and Tasty Vegetable)!

Daikon foliage, pre-deer (the stems coming out of the daikon at the bottom of the photo are actually from another annual - redwhisker clammyweed - that was growing in the same area where I scattered the daikon seeds)

In the U.S., when we think of radishes, many of us think of the cute little red skinned radishes.

I like those little reds as much as the next guy, but let me tell you something - they do not thrive on heavy clay. And by 'do not thrive', I mean that when I tried growing them, most of them failed to develop anything resembling the round, bulbous shape that the word 'radish' conjures. It was an abject disappointment.

But daikon radishes - sometimes known as tillage radish - is in a different category altogether. In fact, daikon radishes are so renowned for their ability to penetrate compacted clay soils that some people use them as a winter cover crop to aerate the soil (example Delta Farm Press). Note that if you're growing it to amend the soil, the idea is not to harvest the radish, but to allow it to winter kill and then decay in the soil.

Daikon foliage, post-deer (or possibly post-rabbit)

Having just removed some shrubs from a garden bed, I had some bare soil in September and no firm idea what I wanted to plant there yet. I thought I'd do a trial planting of daikon to see (a) if it could make a good cover crop and (b) if I could get any sizeable radishes from the bed for eating.

I happen to enjoy eating daikon radish, for instance sliced and added on top of a salad.

I sowed the seeds (from Sow True Seeds) in September, gave them a couple drinks of water to get started and then basically left them alone to fend for themselves during two months of severe drought that followed.

How did they fare?

Color me impressed. As a cover crop, daikon produced a nice head of leaves that sheltered the soil and blocked weeds. (The leaves are also edible, fyi.)

And the roots actually did manage to penetrate the hard-as-concrete parched clay soil. In fact, the soil was so tight that I had to water the plants just to pull some of the radishes without having them break in the middle.

A couple of daikon radishes pulled from the concrete, er... clay, soil

Now, it's true that my radishes did not reach the mammoth portions of ones grown in sandy-loamy soils. In Japan, where daikon radishes are quite popular, the roots can easily be 12 inches long with the diameter of a baseball bat. My daikons were only about one-third that size, but consider their growing environment and the lack of rain (which would probably have softened the soil and allowed the daikon root to expand deeper and wider), I was quite impressed and pleased with their performance.

How was the taste? I was expecting that the lack of rain would have made the radishes hot and spicy, and indeed the first daikon I ate was almost too hot to handle, but the subsequent ones I consumed generally had just enough bite.

Sliced daikon makes a lovely salad topping

I did run into two problems - deer and rabbits.

The daikon leaves seemed mainly untouched in late October, but throughout November, I saw more and more herbivore damage (and telltale deer droppings scattered around the backyard pointed to the culprits). I figured the deer shouldered all the blame, but late in November, I spotted a well-fed bunny scampering from the radish patch, so I'm dividing the blame among both types of critters.

Still, I can't blame them too much. A nearby wood has been mostly clear-cut this summer, and the drought meant that much surviving wild vegetation was parched, dead or dormant. Finding this green salad bar in my backyard probably seemed like quite a treat - maybe even a life-saving one - for the critters.

I saved some seed and hope to try again in the spring. If we have normal rainfall this winter (the last week has been promising), hopefully there will be plenty of other wild greens for the local herbivores to eat and I'll get a chance to see how the daikon fare without being denuded of their foliage. (Neither the rabbits nor the deer touched the radish root, so technically I could still dig up and eat some of the daikons, but I think I'll let them decompose over the winter to help the soil.)

Overall, I'd say this experiment was quite fun, tasty and successful. So much so, that I plan to grow a lot more daikon in the future. And for any other gardeners out there stuck with heavy compacted clay - consider giving daikon radishes a try!