Daikon radishes?

Applegate wrote:SG, if you ever do plant horseradish, do not put it in your beds, it is envasive in a BIG way. I have been trying to get rid of it for a year.

Thanks Applegate, I learned that one a few years ago Where did you get yours? I can't seem to find it??

Got the root stock in early spring at a local garden center. You can buy roots online, or have a local nursery order you some.

*bump*

Planted daikon last fall. Poor germination, but I did get two of them. The tops are starting to get up there and it looks like they may be bolting already. But ... from sticking my finger in the soil, I can't feel anything like a radish root. That's a shame, since they've been in the ground since at least October. And it makes me wonder ... what could I have done any differently?

What makes radishes bulb or not bulb?

Marc Iverson wrote:*bump*

Planted daikon last fall.  Poor germination, but I did get two of them.  The tops are starting to get up there and it looks like they may be bolting already.  But ... from sticking my finger in the soil, I can't feel anything like a radish root.  That's a shame, since they've been in the ground since at least October.  And it makes me wonder ... what could I have done any differently?

What makes radishes bulb or not bulb?

Good question.  I had a terrible time with radishes last year.  Ended up eating the leaves & the seed pods (Yummo, btw).  But my daikon did pretty well, they just took a really long time to grow.  I think I planted the seeds early/mid summer right after taking out the romaine, and didn't harvest them until late fall - one medium sized one and a few small ones.
That's them in the far left row of this box, interspersed with chard:
I seem to remember purposely putting them along this edge for the shade.  The more shaded they were, the bigger the daikon was.  hmmm...
   

 I'll try them again since the are so expensive at the store.  Here's the med sized one with some carrot thinnings:

I don't do so well with root veggies.  But I can grow great greens!   Must be a bit of a nitrogen imbalance.

CC

Nitrogen would be good for your greens ... I know bulbs like onions like nitrogen too. I was planning on adding some compost and maybe also giving my onions a spray of fish fertilizer,since they've been under row cover and ignored all winter (same with my daikon), and now the sun is coming out pretty regularly once the morning fog and clouds disperse. Got to be 70 degrees yesterday.

I think it may be phosphorous that helps rooting ... I need to go look it up and refresh my memory ... soil here is often acidic and benefits from liming ...

Did your daikon root itself taste okay after the plant went to seed? Was it woody? It looks like you pulled it up after eating the pods,so I wonder how it tasted at that point.

The radishes, daikon & red round, that I ate the pods & leaves of were spring planted and bolted in the heat before they finished forming edible roots.  The tiny roots were woody but the seed pods that came later were well worth doing a spring planting again to get them.  My daikon didn't bolt in the fall.  They were delicious and perfect. 

CC

Mine are fall-planted but bolting in the spring before forming a root.

Did you keep some of the seeds from the pods for replanting?

Marc Iverson wrote:Mine are fall-planted but bolting in the spring before forming a root.  

Did you keep some of the seeds from the pods for replanting?

I didn't keep any seeds from the spring bolting... I wish I had though.  I didn't know at the time that they would grow properly for fall if planted in summer shade. 

I think I have some left but I don't remember seeing them.  I'll have to look, or else buy some more. 

CC

I planted these daikon the beginning of August but I should have read through this thread first and planted them in shade.


They are also probably too shallow and too crowded at 3 . 2. 3 .2.3.
Someone in this thread said that 5 like on a dice is perfect.

CC

This square of daikon were overshadowing all the carrot boxes around them. So I today I thinned them and tied them up.


and this is what I ended up with, not including the potatoes which came from another area

Christina Cooks says that the smaller diakons are better than the larger ones. Not sure she meant this small but they'll do until the others grow. I always try to find the carrot sized at the store and avoid those big honkin ones that are the size of a baseball bat..

I need to do something with all the greens. There's no way to eat them all fresh. I'm afraid I'd end up the dehydrated. I'm thinking of maybe blanching and freezing but I'm not sure. Has anyone preserved daikon or other radish leaves yet?

CC

I like the big ones just fine. I always peel them. Some things I've done with them:

1. Thinly sliced on top of sandwich stuffings (liverwurst sandwich, chicken sandwich)
2. Shredded on a box grater and used as a bedding for sauteed cod fish. (The Japanese commonly do this with sashimi too.
3. Pickling some now -- slices cut in quarters
4. In stir fry
5. Put a scoop of chicken salad in center of plate, surround with thin half circle of carrots on one side and thin half circle of shredded daikon on other side, then do the opposite for another circle so you have two half moons, one white(daikon) with orange(carrot) inside, and the other orange with white inside. Nice design effect!
6. Chopped them up and eaten them as a snack. The ones I've had have been quite mild, and if you can eat most regular radishes, you can eat daikon. I peel them first, though.

llama momma wrote:I've got Japanese Minowase Daikon - just for fun. Never grew this before but the packet says it can grow 2 ft long and 3" wide.  I'm going to try it in my 1 ft tall box and build it up higher then plant either 6 or 9 to a square and see what happens.  I shake my head when I make impulse seed purchases like this,  I don't even like radishes.  I think it was the "sweet and crisp" description that caught my eye. I've only had radishes that were spicy.  Anyway, darn that Bakers Creek    and good luck everyone.

Update, one radish came up, that's out of one square planted.   It kept pushing itself up out of the soil and getting taller.  The soil line in the entire box though dropped down a lot.  Decided today that's enough and pulled it.  The bottom is flat telling me I think it must've hit bottom.  I'm reading up on what to do with the crazy thing.   Oh, the root is eight inches.

That radish bottom is hysterical, LM.  Mine usually curve over when they hit bottom. I just thinned my daikon Square about half an hour ago, pulling up all the un formed plants in order to use the leaves in my weekly lettuce box. I've been eating fully developed radishes for about a month now, pulling them as I need them. there are about 6 or 7 big ones still left in there. I think I'm having such good luck with root veggies in this particular box because I added a sprinkling of Plant Tone as an experiment to my MM back in the spring.

Oh, and I just grated up one daikon to use with the cabbage and carrots in the sauerkraut I just threw together to ferment.  Other than that I usually eat a few pieces in the mornings a couple times a week as well as chop some thin slices to put in my lettuce box.  They are used just like you use radishes. If I have an overabundance by the time I pull the rest up I will slice them and blanche them and put them in the freezer for morning snacking and soups.

woops, the Sun is moving behind a tree. Gotta move my chair...
CC

I like your idea to slice, blanch, and put into soup.  Just my style.  But since there is only one I should probably taste it this evening and see if I even like it. 

OK, so I harvested a bunch of daikon last weekend. I love the greens, too, and they are huge in this batch.  Here's a blurry photo but you can see what I mean: 

So I blanched the greens by holding onto the diakons while dunking the greens in boiling water, then cold water, then laid them out on this parchment paper:

Then I rolled the leaves up:

Bag the roll:
...rubberband the ends and freeze.

When I need some, I just slice off what I need from the end - many small slices or a big chunk, whatever - wrap the remainder back up and put it back in to the bag and freezer.

That's how I freeze do all my greens.

While all this was going on I had threw the whole diakon radishes in the hot water to blanch...
... then sliced them into coins, spread them single layer on a parchment covered cookie sheet and popped it in the freezer.   Once frozen, they went into a baggie.

CC

CC, I just had the worst experience with my frozen summer kale. I sauteed a bag of it and it was too tough to finish eating. All I had done in the summer was rinse, pat dry and freeze.

Does your method of blanching, chilling, rolling, and bagging prevent the greens from becoming tough?

Thanks

sanderson wrote:CC, I just had the worst experience with my frozen summer kale. I sauteed a bag of it and it was too tough to finish eating. All I had done in the summer was rinse, pat dry and freeze.

Does your method of blanching, chilling, rolling, and bagging prevent the greens from becoming tough?

Thanks

Gosh, Sanderson... I don't know the answer to that. Since I mostly eat them raw my greens are so young when I pick them that I don't think they have a chance to get tough. But last year a friend gave me these gargantuan leaves of collard greens. There was so much of it that I blanched and rolled them before freezing. But when I went to use them, thinking they might be tough, I sliced them off the roll in very thin strips after cutting an X into the role halfway down first. When they're shaved that small I don't notice if they are tough or not.

P.s any chance of copying these greens posts: to a greens heading? I don't think many folks will look in a daikon thread but we may get answers if it's posted in a greens thread.
CC

CC, I do the same thing with tough greens or veggies that have strings in them. Sliced small enough, the strings in, say, celery are hard to notice. Works to a certain extent with overcooked meat, too. A tough pork chop can be made into a decent salad when chopped fine.

I don't know anything about this radish, except what I read on Google.

How does the daikon taste compared to other radishes?  Stronger or milder?

To me they taste almost the same as red radishes but a bit different.  Mine change strength with the seasons, like my red radishes.  They are hotter during warmer weather and milder during the cooler.

Except for the diuretic affect that daikon has on me and the reds don't, they can be used interchangebly IMO.

CC

There are supposedly many, many kinds of daikon, but the ones I've had in 40 years of eating them have all been mild. I always peel the skin, though.

They're especially good sliced into coins, halved, and pickled.

Marc, what variety?

Oh, I don't know. I just buy them at the supermarket. The ones I planted last fall all bolted before forming a substantial root.

I'll try again, but for now haven't had them home-grown.

I just discovered these and they sound FABULOUS! I'll be ordering seeds today. If anybody wants some, this will be a 4x lifetime supply for me, so I'd be happy to share.

http://sustainableseedco.com/compost-cover-crops/daikon-radish.html

I grow them as microgreens.  They are delish as microgreens.  I also harvested very immature seed pods and they were very good eaten in a salad.  Then I allowed the seed pods to mature and harvested 10 oz of seed to use this fall.  But they did take for ever to produce dried seeds.  I also planted them as a cover/green manure crop last fall. But I must have planted them too late in the fall because they did not grow a good tap root.