Red Radish Seeds 15g

The red radish is the classic salad radish: a rounded, cherry-bright root with vivid crimson skin wrapped around crisp, snowy-white flesh. Its flavour is clean and refreshingly peppery, with a juicy crunch that adds colour and a gentle bite to salads, garnishes and crudite platters. Because it is a fast salad type, it rewards you quickly, making it one of the easiest and most satisfying roots to grow at home.

Planting

Radish is a cool-season crop. Sow salad radishes successionally in spring, early summer and late summer, and avoid sowing in hot, dry weather because the plants bolt and run to flower. For a continuous supply, make repeated small sowings every 10-14 days. Sow the salad radish seed about 1 cm deep, spacing seeds 2.5-5 cm apart with 15 cm between rows. Choose an open, sunny site in full sun; light or partial shade is acceptable in midsummer to reduce bolting, since long, hot summer days promote flowering while shorter day exposure of about 8 hours favours root formation. Radish is direct-sown rather than transplanted because it dislikes root disturbance. Seedlings usually emerge in roughly 3-10 days, commonly 4-7 days in warm soil and up to 10 days in cool soil; the seed germinates at soil temperatures as low as about 5 C, with the fastest germination near 21 C and an optimum range of roughly 10-24 C.

Fertilizing

Prepare the bed with aged compost before sowing, then side-dress with aged compost again at midseason. Avoid fresh manure and high-nitrogen fertilizers, which push lush leafy growth at the expense of the roots. A balanced or low-nitrogen feed is preferred, and root crops respond well to a phosphorus-leaning blend such as 5-10-10. As a guide to demand, reported nutrient uptake is about 2.15 kg nitrogen, 0.45 kg phosphorus and 2.58 kg potassium per 1000 kg of fresh root.

Care

Keep the soil consistently moist for rapid, even growth and crisp, non-split roots. Aim for about 2.5 cm of water per week, soaking the soil thoroughly at least once a week; sandy soils need watering more often than heavy clay. Irregular or insufficient water makes roots woody and hot-tasting. Thin the seedlings about a week after they emerge, leaving salad types around 2-2.5 cm apart so the roots have room to swell. Watch for flea beetles, which leave small holes in the leaves, along with cabbage root fly and root maggots tunnelling into the roots, slugs and snails on young seedlings, plus aphids and wireworms; floating row cover or fleece together with steady moisture helps prevent flea beetle and root fly damage. Salad radishes mature fast, in about 3-5 weeks, and are ready when the roots reach roughly 2.5 cm across. Harvest promptly, because over-mature roots turn woody, pithy and split.