Other than slicing one up and putting it in a salad how do you use them? The reason I ask is that my spidey senses are telling me to make everything in the garden no kidding count this year. Since my garden is rather small I intend to do a lot of additional gardening in containers and spread them around the yard. I guess I could stick a few radish seeds in pots with something else if it's worth the trouble.
Harvest What Do You Do With Radishes?
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summerkitchen
Contributing Member
Husband makes radish sandwiches! Toasts seeded rye bread, slathers it with butter and slices radishes on top. Surprisingly delicious.
naturallysweet
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Radishes can be fried or boiled like potatoes. Great for low carb diets. When they bolt, don't kill them. The seed pods when young, are tasty and taste like a cross between pea pods and radish.
jward
passin' thru
They're tasty, even used like taters, but when you speak of making things count, it brings to mind calorie bang for the space & growing times. Radishes don't offer much in that dept. Then again, they are quick growers and probably can be sprinkled amongst rows of your longer growing items, thus giving a " bonus crop " of sorts!
...also those dakon, if memory serves, radishes are great for kimchi, and excellent crops for breaking up the soils.
...also those dakon, if memory serves, radishes are great for kimchi, and excellent crops for breaking up the soils.
jward
passin' thru
When we think about the roots, then, it’s no surprise that the foot-long plus daikon radish (also known as forage radish or tillage radish) are changing soils, and the farms and gardens that grow them, the world over.
If you’ve ever grown daikon, then you know it’s formidable power. The day I pulled a radish as long as a tennis racket and the diameter of a small sushi plate, was the day I started to understand of just what mighty feats it was capable.
Daikon radish softens the soil
By itself, daikon radish is a superb vegetable. It’s a staple of Japanese food culture, whether pickled, garnished, or served steaming in miso soup. Traditionally know as a yin food, it cools and calms the body. Masanobu Fukuoka, who used daikon extensively in his natural farming methods, recounts in his book The One Straw Revolution that the name for the wild ancestor of daikon translates as ” ‘the herb that soften’s one’s disposition’ “. My Japanese aikido teacher confirms. “When you have daikon in a soup, like oden, it really calms the body. We should serve it in prisons”, she suggests, laughing.
Left to rot in the soil, daikon-type radish produces a similar effect. Among many other benefits, daikon is renown for softening the soil. As Fukuoka simply states, “if the soil is hard, grow Japanese radish first.”
Natural farmers have known this truth for generations. Now, even big agriculture praises it’s effects, as corn, wheat, and soybean producers add tillage radish to their rotations.
Why not let daikon radish till soils for you?
Biodrilling up to six feet below the soil surface, daikon radish is nature’s rototiller. It breaks through hard, compacted soil layers that have broken many a gardener back. It mechanically opens up channels for water and roots to penetrate.
But unlike your rototiller, daikon fills the holes it drills with pounds and pounds of delicious organic matter (over 3700 lbs of roots/acre in on Michigan study). The microorganisms that feast in your soil think those large white roots are delicious, and they eat up them up fast. As that organic matter brings soil to life, the little soil bugs get busy with the burrowing, growing, and excreting business of decomposing the scrumptious daikon meal, transforming your soil in the process.
Daikon captures last year’s nitrogen, so you don’t have to fertilize
Softening soils is not the only reason to use daikon as a cover between fall and spring crops. It’s deep roots recycle last year’s nitrogen, catching it before it drains out over the winter. Because daikon decomposees so quickly in areas where it naturally dies over winter, that nitrogen is released in the spring for the next season’s use. In one study, this amounted to 170 lbs N/acre – more than enough to meet vegetables growing needs.
Use daikon as a living mulch to keep weeds under control
Topping the mighty roots, daikon wears a crown of broad, 2-3 foot long leaves. Quick-growing, these leaves cover up to 80% of the soil surface, keeping it weed-free and mulched over the winter.
In places where temperatures drop below 20-25°F, gardeners get the extra benefit of winterkilled leaves that mulch the soil surface. After a winter of rotting, daikon leaves unveil of soft, ready-to-plant seedbed when pulled back in the spring.
Transform soils with fall-planted Daikon
Too good to be true? To transform soils in a single season, daikon magic works best in zones where heavy frosts of below 25 ° F naturally kill the cover over winter, so that soil life has time to chew and transform the decomposing crop before spring. In climate zones that don’t have heavy frosts, harvest daikon as an overwintered vegetable and turn the residue back into spring soils. With this method, compacted soils can loosen over a couple of seasons. For natural, wild gardens, let the daikon radish flower in the second season to reseed. In this way you can introduce this phenomenal soil builder into your wild plant guild.
Plant daikon a little earlier than other over-wintering cover crops to give it time to grow a thick leaf canopy. Aim for 4-10 weeks before the first frost – late August in cooler climates, early September in warmer ones.
Like all cover crops, how much seed you use depends on how you garden, seed costs, and your goals (more on this in future posts). In the garden, I use cover crop seeding rates up to 10-20 times higher than farm recommendations. For a quick cover that suppresses weeds, I’ll use 1/4-1/2 a pound per 100 square foot of garden, broadcast and scratched into the top 1/2 of the soil surface. For my no-till beds, I might double this rate, since new plants will be competing with mulch and residue already present on the surface.
Daikon is a type of oilseed radish that is bred as a garden vegetable. This variety will certainly work as a cover crop if you can find an inexpensive seed source. Otherwise, you can order cover crop seed for daikon-type radish under the names tillage radish, forage radish, fodder radish, or groundhog radish.
To dig deeper into daikon, check out these sites:
Cornell’s Cover Crops for Vegetable Growers
eXtension (a great compilation of information from U.S. agricultural extension agencies)
Daikon recipes in the kitchen
More on Masanobu Fukuoka and Natural Farming
Jackpine Savage
Veteran Member
Roast them with potatoes.
We cube up some potatoes so they are the same size as the radishes. Put them in a bowl and add enough olive oil to coat them. Season with chopped up garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper. Spread them on a cookie sheet. Bake in oven. Yum.
We cube up some potatoes so they are the same size as the radishes. Put them in a bowl and add enough olive oil to coat them. Season with chopped up garlic, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper. Spread them on a cookie sheet. Bake in oven. Yum.
WanderLore
Veteran Member
All the farmers out here and this County are using the large radishes as a cover crop in the fall. Also you can grow radishes any old pickle juice and a little extra vinegar salt and sugar they make a good pickle
Marseydoats
Veteran Member
In high school one of my friends got me started rolling them in sugar and eating them as a snack. I guess it's an acquired taste but I still do it 40 years later.
hiwall
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Our family used to eat them that way too.
Jackpine Savage
Veteran Member
We rolled ours in salt rather than sugar.
packyderms_wife
Neither here nor there.
I'm going to have to try this now.
Collected some stuff for you:
www.delish.com
Radish Recipes
www.foodnetwork.com
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www.marthastewart.com
35 Radish Recipes That Are More Than Just Snacks
Radish - Recipes | Cooks.com
www.bing.com
20 Radish Recipes That Prove The Root Vegetable Is Great Raw AND Roasted
Totally rad.
www.delish.com
Radish Recipes
21 Radish Recipes That Pack a Spicy, Flavorful Punch
These fresh, juicy root veggies are the key ingredient in some seriously 'rad dishes'.
www.foodnetwork.com
Wondering What to Make with Radishes? Here Are our Best Recipes
This collection of our favorite radish recipe includes appetizers, side dishes, salads, tarts, and as a topping for tacos. We love radishes both raw and cooked, pickled too and you will too once you try these radish recipes.
35 Radish Recipes That Are More Than Just Snacks
Radish - Recipes | Cooks.com
radish recipes - Bing video
Freeholder
This too shall pass.
I’ve added radishes to stir-fry, and they are good that way. Just slice them up fairly thin.
Some Russian friends of my ex’s family used to grate the big black winter radishes, stir in a little salad dressing, and serve as a salad. I liked it.
The idea about using daikon radishes to soften the soil is something I’m going to try.
Kathleen
Some Russian friends of my ex’s family used to grate the big black winter radishes, stir in a little salad dressing, and serve as a salad. I liked it.
The idea about using daikon radishes to soften the soil is something I’m going to try.
Kathleen
Weft and Warp
Senior Member
Make pesto out of the radish leaves. I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds delicious!
Pickle the radishes the way the Koreans do (and add a little turmeric, to make it yellow).
Pickle the radishes the way the Koreans do (and add a little turmeric, to make it yellow).
Raggedyman
Res ipsa loquitur
Jaybird
Veteran Member
I make kimchi and sauerkraut. The Dakon radish is very mild. You could do a lot with it. I like the little red ones when they just start getting peppy with salt. you can pickle most any vegetable. I think the Dakon will take on any flavor you give it kinda like a mushroom. One of my favorites is hot pickled cauliflower. I could see radishes being good that way. Just a thought.
questionable1
Contributing Member
I've always used radishes for a row marker. Lots of great ideas here on this thread. Im going to have to expand my horizons this year.
Seeker22
Has No Life - Lives on TB
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dioptase
Veteran Member
Working my way down through this forum...
I've used SOME radish leaves fresh in salads, where they made a nice addition. The trick is to pick leaves that aren't very hairy or prickly (as I remember... this is the first year in many that I'm growing radishes again). The year that I did this, I grew the Easter Egg radishes, and iirc it was the white radishes that had the smoother leaves, better for eating raw in the salad.
(Disclaimer - I'm not really a radish fan, though I suppose they are okay in salads if used sparingly and thinly sliced. DH likes them, though, which is why I grew them, and why I have some growing right now. I am always looking for new/easy/tasty greens to throw into the salads, which is why I was experimenting with the radish leaves.)
I've used SOME radish leaves fresh in salads, where they made a nice addition. The trick is to pick leaves that aren't very hairy or prickly (as I remember... this is the first year in many that I'm growing radishes again). The year that I did this, I grew the Easter Egg radishes, and iirc it was the white radishes that had the smoother leaves, better for eating raw in the salad.
(Disclaimer - I'm not really a radish fan, though I suppose they are okay in salads if used sparingly and thinly sliced. DH likes them, though, which is why I grew them, and why I have some growing right now. I am always looking for new/easy/tasty greens to throw into the salads, which is why I was experimenting with the radish leaves.)