How To Growing and Serve This Quick Maturing Spring Vegetable.
Radishes are some of the first things you can harvest from your garden because they can be planted early in the season and because they mature very quickly -- generally in under 30 days.
This year, we are growing several varieties, including a long-time favorite, the French Breakfast radish. This variety of radish is oblong shaped with a scarlet red top and a creamy white bottom. They are mild to sweet tasting when young and become increasingly hot tasting as they mature.
Growing Information
You plant French Breakfast radishes in the springtime, in a sunny area, in rows 6" apart. Cover them with 1/2" of fine soil. The seeds germinate in 7-10 days and should be thinned so that mature plants are spaced 2-3" apart.
They are generally ready for harvest in 25-30 days. You'll know it's harvest time because the tops of the radishes will begin to poke out of
the ground. (see attached photo)
In my opinion, time is not kind to French Breakfast radishes; if left in the ground too long, they become very hot tasting and pithy, so it's best to harvest them relatively young. I like to pull them when they are about an inch long. At this size, they are crisp and mild with only a slightly hot finish.
To extend your harvest of young radishes, consider planting smaller batches every 2 weeks.
Eating Them
Despite the name "French Breakfast," I don't think anyone in France, or elsewhere, eats this variety for breakfast. I suspect they are really more of a snack.
I eat them with just a little salt, but it is very common for people to dip them in soft, salted butter. (If you are eating larger and older radishes, the butter is probably more essential, since it tends to the cut the heat.)
Another nice simple way to enjoy them is as a radish sandwich. Just place thin radish slices between two pieces of buttered pumpernickel bread.
Technically, you can also eat the radish tops in a salad, but I don't recommend this. The leaves are too prickly in my opinion. I either compost them or give them to our chickens who are less discriminating eaters than us people.
Since I've been experimenting with food preservation techniques this year, I'm going to try brining radishes to see how this impact their flavor and whether it suggests new culinary uses for them. Who knows, maybe they really will make it to breakfast after all.
Comments