A little under 2 months ago, with winter right around the corner, we decided to start a small garden and grow 🌱 as many vegetables as we could in the limited amount of time we had. James Gibbon went to the store and purchased onions, lettuce, carrots 🥕 , cabbage, bok choy, and some various different types of radishes. During our garden experiment, there was one vegetable that ruled them all - the radish. Why do you ask? The radish is one of the fastest growing edible vegetables 🌱. In as little as 30 days, an edible radish can be grown from seed. I think this is pretty incredible and certainly makes growing this vegetable a lot of fun. Our radishes took longer than 30 days to grow due to our late season planting, but they still grew incredible quickly.

Our radish journey began by planting the seeds. A vital step where we made a few major errors that drastically impacted our production. I can’t stress enough how important it is to plant the seeds ATLEAST 1 inch apart from each other. We were in a hurry to get the seeds planted and crowded the seeds which hindered the growth of the radishes and caused some radishes to only grow leaves. Once we had the seeds planted it was time to water the garden a couple times a day. As the weather became increasingly cooler, we covered the radishes with plastic to help provide warmth.

The radishes continued to grow and I took pictures of their progress as seen above and below.

After 30 days, things started to get really interesting. Our French Breakfast radishes started to become visible above ground and this is when I knew we were close to being ready to harvest. However, some of the bulbs were still really small and I wanted to wait as long as we could to get the best radishes possible. Mother nature had plans of her own on when we would pull the radishes and when the weather reported 20 degree weather in October, I knew we needed to pull our radishes before the freeze. This is what we got!

We had a really successful harvest and we were overwhelmed with gratitude. To be able to build a garden, grow vegetables, and harvest them in under 50 days was a really RAD experience. I hope you enjoyed hearing our radish story and please comment below!

So what about the gardening?

Great question. So a lot has been going on in the garden since I last blogged. If you follow me on instagram, than you already have seen the progress of our radishes and lettuces. Although we sit at around day 35 with these, we are waiting to pull them as they still have room to mature. Unfortunately, we are battling the elements here in Montana and snow is forecasted the next 3 days. So let’s all pull together and help the lettuce and the radishes survive this cold ❄️blitz.

James Gibbon - A Radish Experience

James Gibbon | Mountain Biking and Gardening

So what about the gardening?