Daikon Radish Seeds Growing Well!

Day before yesterday, I wrote that this was arugula. But, David Beasley saw the picture and said it was Daikon radish.

This is what the original Daikon radishes looked like. In fact, they caught my attention the day I met Shmal! That's why I took the picture. Pretty huge radishes!

Here's Sh'mal the day I met him. Hi Sh'mal! This was back in April of this year, 2008. If your interested in seeing more pictures of the garden last spring, click here. You'll surf to the blog that I made before I created this Zoobird community.

Sh'mal harvested some of the Daikon radish for salads. Then, as summer approached, he began collecting seeds. You can see the green seed pods clearly in this photo. I had no idea how popular Daikon radishes were, especially in Asian culture, until I read this wikipedia article. "A 3 ounce (85 g) serving contains only 18 Calories (75 kJ) and provides 34 percent of the RDA for vitamin C. Daikon also contains the active enzyme myrosinase that aids digestion, particularly of starchy foods." The fact that 3 ounces of Daikon radish provides 34% of the RDA for vitamin C explains it. Plus, it aids in digestion. In Japan, it is stewed with octopus and squid and the enzyme papain it contains acts as a tenderizer to the shellfish, according to the wikipedia article.

Sh'mal told me that he planned to let the seed pods dry and then save them for planting later.

Here you can see some dried seed pods Sh'mal saved and the seeds from within the pods.

Well, last night Sh'mal sent an email and told me how to tell whether this is Daikon radish. He said "You can peek into the ground below the green and see the white of the radish." So, that's on the agenda today.

Bob gave me some spinach and radish seeds, which I've planted. Thanks, Bob. That made my day. I think you could tell how much I appreciated the gesture when you gave them to me. I'll take a peek at the sprouts today and let you know how they're doing. Bob told me he got these seeds from Survivalist Seeds. He blogged about them here. In fact, Bob's blog is full of interesting information.

Mary gave me some mesclun mix and some bok choy seedlings. Thanks so much, Mary! The recent heavy rains have been a little rough on the seedlings. There are some new weeds, too. So, I'll do a little weeding today. I'll see how the spinach and radish seeds are doing. And, we'll see how the mesclun mix and some bok choy seedlings fared in the heavy rain.

How many of you start your crops from seed and how many use seedlings?