Radishes An Old Idea That Is New Again

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks for posting that one. It's close to home for me, too. I am about two hours from St Louis.

[LoreD]

I remember planting the long season chinese radishes, and they spread everywhere. There were empty plots next to mine. The village would keep mowing them down, when they went to seed, which spread the seed everywhere. It started out as a couple of short rows in my plot. When I left it was completely covering all of the adjacent plots. It has been about 10 years since I left for a different community garden, they are still going strong, and I still go out there to harvest the wild growing radishes.

[Hellmanns]

Redroot pigweed is the absolute worst weed I can imagine! It will out compete any crop I know, and be 6 feet tall in two weeks, I swear you can see it grow! And to top it off, a large plant can contain a million seed.

[Cole_Robbie]

The thorny pigweed is the really wicked stuff. I don't mind the non-thorny, at least I can pull it by hand.

If anyone could ever discover a use for Johnson Grass tubers that make them valuable, I'd be sitting on a gold mine.

[svalli]

We just sowed cover crop radishes on our field to suppress the weeds and loosen the heavy clay soil and also to add organic matter. There is much more acreage than what we need for a small potato patch and other veggies, so last year we sowed peas and mixture of fodder brassicas for the local wildlife to forage. This is an old farming field which has been used to grow silage hay for many years and it has taken us time to keep tilling every summer to get rid of the perennial grasses. Now we are finally in such phase that we can let the cover crops grow and do not have to keep tilling through the summer.
The radishes should also kill potato cyst nematode from the soil, so we will use it in rotation with the potatoes.

Sari

[gratefulseeder]

Parsnips do an even better job than radishes at cracking the soil. So do dandelions. You can turn them under or just let them go until the next season. Either way they crack the soil, feed the soil, suppress weeds and you can eat both of them...BONUS!!! Dandelions are also one of the first wildflowers to bloom in the spring for the pollinators.

[mjc]

Originally Posted by gratefulseeder

BONUS!!! Dandelions are also one of the first wildflowers to bloom in the spring for the pollinators.

And can be used to make wine...

[NarnianGarden]

Sorry, double

[NarnianGarden]

Dandelions are growing everywhere in Finland, they're so common in every garden / yard / lawn that they cause despair. I cannot imagine anyone wanting to sow them willingly, never mind how healthy they are..
They're considered a plague and are almost impossible to get rid of.

I do take a dandelion supplement, but I hope it's organically grown and does not have dog pee residues...

[svalli]

I agree with NarnianGarden, people would think that we are totally nuts to sow dandelions on purpose. The farmers next to us would not appreciate, if there was a cloud of dandelion seeds flying from our field to theirs during summer breezes. Parsnips could be OK, since I like to eat them, but to get enough seed to cover 2 acres is not cost effective.
Part of the field is growing apple trees and there was a lot of dandelions blooming around the trees before we had time to mow the area first time this year. One reason to sow the radishes to the bare soil area is to prevent the dandelions from taking over.
Dandelions are perennial and start to grow even from a piece of a root so plowing and harrowing the field would just make more of them. The radish root die and decay during the winter and even if some of the produced seeds would sprout, an annual plant is easy to control by tilling the surface.

Sari

[gorbelly]

Tillage radishes do winter kill up here. I planted the daikon variety Minowase in late summer and harvested some once winter came to eat and left most in the ground to benefit the soil. But boy, do they stink in the spring when the weather warms and the roots decompose.

However, they're really great for soil organisms. The worms LOVE soil in which daikon were grown and left to rot.

[brownrexx]

I planted a cover crop of tillage radishes 2 years ago. No problem with winter kill and they are great soil busters for clay soil. Their blanket of dead leaves also suppressed spring weeds. I was very pleased with them. This is after the first major cold snap but the rest of the green leaves died after it got cold again.

[AlittleSalt]

It's kind of funny that this thread popped up today. I was out looking at the purslane growing around the tomato plants. It's working as a ground cover. I only had to pull one weed.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by AlittleSalt

It's kind of funny that this thread popped up today. I was out looking at the purslane growing around the tomato plants. It's working as a ground cover. I only had to pull one weed.

Sweet taters do the same thing, weed control.

Worth

[cjp1953]

Going to try tillage radishes this year as my winter cover crop.1 pound for $2.99.I only have 225 sq.ft.That seed should last me a few years.