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The First Harvest: Radishes

Radishes are truly wonderful as they don't take a lot of time to grow (mine were about 20 days) and they are so satisfying to harvest. Harvesting the radishes was going to be easier I thought. In many ways it was but there was an extra step involved - relay planting. This is a key concept in SPIN farming. You plant one set of seeds, harvest them and while harvesting you plant the next set of seeds. It is a good way of getting a continuous harvest. I am just beginning to experiment with this as well as other methods of getting a lot of things to grow in a small space. I had two beds of radishes to harvest with two rows each. These beds had been done in one week intervals. Surprisingly they were both about the same size. I got my seed packet ready and started harvesting. I would harvest one section and then go back and seed it. I knew that if I picked everything I wold be less likely to go back and seed it as I didn't want the radishes sitting in the air getting soggy. Incrementally worked well and nothing was soggy by the time I went in. If I had had more I would have also done it in two stages. I tried to place the seed in the appropriate spacing right off the bat, but with dirty, wet hands I found it challenging. My first bed I randomly placed the seeds and then had to go back and thin them out. this was more work than just doing the spacing from the beginning. In another 20 days I should have another harvest from the same beds waiting to go to market. I took them inside and just rinsed them through some wash water and left them to drain and dry. I wasn't sure how to sort them as a bunch. They were a variety of sizes and I didn't have enough to make exact numbers. I settled on having six in a bunch with different sizes. Unfortunately I had left the radishes a bit too long so I ended up having half of my harvest splitting from too much and fast growth or being tasted by various critters. I couldn't sell these so I cut them up, getting rid of the already nibbled bits, for samples at the market. I admit I ate a fair number of the pieces as they were quite tasty. I didn't even like radishes but now I adore them. they made me feel very proud.