Daikon Landrace Update: April 22, 2024

We had a very nice time at the Spring Gardening Masterclass on Saturday – thanks to all of you that made the trek.

If you missed it, we’ll be having SCRUBFEST III at the same location on October 19th. I also hope to release the talks we did at this spring event, via a super secret platform we’ve been working on.

Right now in the gardens, our daikon radish landrace project is producing a ton of seeds again. This will be the third generation, and if previous results hold, we’ll end up with more more purple and white roots and less pure red and pure white ones.

This is an update from December. The bed looked like this back then:

It looks like this now:

The radishes are loaded with seed pods, and we should get lots and lots for our fall planting.

Most of the seed pods are close to harvest, with a few late bloomers still flowering:

The bases of the roots are huge and gnarly:

We didn’t plant and purple radishes to begin with. They were all either red or white. This is what has happened via our crosses. Now many of the roots look like purple-top turnips (though they taste better than that benighted root).

Saving seeds gives you another harvest from your garden. If you can leave some plants around in a bed and keep the seeds, you are creating potential future generations of crops that won’t require you buying more seed. Plus, they should adapt better to your garden over time.

If you don’t have this book, go buy it:

It will change how you think about seeds and gardening.