Whwew are my radishes?

[SarahJane]

My first lot of radishes should be more than ready, last weekend i pulled one up and it was perfect but a little small. This morning I decided to pull them up and .....NOTHING! good root system and the leaves are big and healthy, but no radishes!
What have I done wrong? I had no problems last year.

[Millymollymandy]

I dunno! Do you mean the root is there but it hasn't swollen up like a radish should? Maybe they just need a bit more time?

You can usually see whether they are big enough for picking by the bit that sticks out of the ground - so you don't need to pull them up to have a look.

[MKG]

Big, healthy leaves might be the key (indicates high nitrogen concentration). It should take 3 to 5 weeks to develop a spring radish. If the timing's OK and you have lush leaf growth but no swelled root, it may be (I know it sounds stupid) that the plant just didn't need to develop a swelled root in which to store nutrients. Have you, by any chance, been using a nitrate fertiliser?

[AXJ]

I made a huge mistake with my window box, the first crop was going to be radishes, and to be fair we got a good few bunches.

The only problem was that thinking organic, I got a couple of carrier bags of horse manure and dug that in when I was preparing the soil.

What I did not realise was that Radishes (and other root crops) love manure, which I guess from MKG's post, must be high in nitrates. You get a forest of leaves, and thin spindly red root, which is not the radish we are looking for.

As the manure was not very well spread, we did get a reasonable crop from the seeds which were not in contact with the dung.

I kept about three or four radishes which had grown to the size of small beetroots, (they heads poking out of the ground) and I have let these got to seed, well to flower at the moment. This is mainly for the children to see how nature works, and how a radish does not just exist for us to pull up. The radish plants are getting on for two and a half feet tall, you would not credit that the humble radish has such foliage asperations!!

I will try and get some pics to post, just need to get some batteries for my camera, children are always chucking out my rechargables, so frustrating.

[Millymollymandy]

That's interesting - I'd love to see a radish like that in a window box! You're right though about veggies - we so often don't even think about them flowering, well apart from the ones that flower first then we eat them.

[MKG]

Crop No. 2, AXJ - the seed pods of radishes are edible too.

[AXJ]

wow... edible seed pods, now there is something to look forward to!! I am going to wish I had left a few more in I can see this coming. Well plenty of time to add some more seeds, the old window box is gtting a bit crowded now tho.. and as mentioned else where I have vinas (runner bean) plants going in to what is left of my fallow area.

[AXJ]

Well I got some batteries for my c##py digital camera here is the radish in flower, unfortunately the camera is not very good at dealing withback light.

Also you can see the mini beetroot sized radishes that support such plants.

When I get some better shots of my AXJ plot, I'll post them.

[Millymollymandy]

I suppose I should have guessed it would look like a flowering brassica!