Since I moved this spring, I can have a garden and I was very excited at the prospect. I spent the end of winter pouring over seed catalogs and deciding what I would plant. I went with a few things I enjoy eating - like beets and kale - but I also wanted to have fun with it so I picked a few random things that struck my fancy. This is how my garden now includes ground cherries and rat-tailed radishes. That last one I picked mostly because the name was funny.
Once we were safe to plant I sowed my seeds and eagerly awaited the growing plants. As we began to harvest the first crops, I didn't think too much about my rat-tails other than to check the plants occasionally. Then they flowered. A little background here: rat-tailed radishes are a seed pod, unlike the radishes most of us know. I began to realize that each of my plants, over 3 feet tall, was covered in dozens of flowers. And if each flower produces a pod...
I wasn't wrong. We are in the midst of the radish harvest now and it's a lot. My crafting time has largely been spent trying to keep up with the radishes on top of kale and zucchini. As more and more radishes collect in my refrigerator, I've been trying to come up with uses for them.
In addition to chopping them into salads and sauteeing them, this weekend I tried 2 experiments, both of which I'm happy to say turned out pretty well. On the left, we have refrigerator pickled radishes, and the right are radish crisps (made in the dehydrator). I even made a little rat label for the crisps.
So that's my cautionary tale. Before you plant random vegetables, do a little research and so you know what to expect from you plants. And then maybe don't plant every seed in the packet.
No comments:
Post a Comment