John Myers
There is nothing better than harvesting fruit or vegetables in your own garden. Radishes are particularly enjoyable for a long time. Because you can harvest them every day. Work as little as possible and enjoy as much as possible – hobby gardeners are enthusiastic about the small, red tubers.
Maturity test for radishes – better sooner than too late
You can harvest the first radishes, depending on the variety, about a month after sowing. After 21 to 28 days, check the tuber size daily on the plants with the largest leaves. All tubers that are 2 to 3 centimeters long are ripe. They shouldn’t be in the ground for longer than 6 weeks, otherwise, they lose their typically pungent taste, become woody or spongy, and burst.
To taste the radish, hold the leaves in one hand and the bulb in the other. Then twist and break off leaves. Rinse the radishes with cold water. Now comes the bite test. If they taste crisp and hot, they are ripe. You can also harvest all other bulbs of the same size.
Radishes harvest in the late afternoon
Harvesting root vegetables like radishes in the late afternoon guarantees the highest levels of vitamins and the lowest levels of nitrates. During the day, radishes store the nitrate stored in the tubers in the plant tissue with the help of sunlight. The nitrate content in the tubers is highest at night and in the morning. Therefore, radishes should be harvested in the afternoon. For the radish mice as a party snack in the evening or for the salad the next day.
Collect radish seeds for next year yourself
If you leave furry or woody radishes in the ground, they will form pods after a short time. As soon as the pods turn light brown, the seed is ripe and can be dried. It is best kept in a paper bag. Next spring you can sow your own radish seeds. So you are independent of buying seeds when sowing radishes.
Tips and tricks
Harvesting radishes is too much work for you? Dutch engineers spent 5 years developing a radish robot with 90 pneumatic cylinders. This harvests and bundles 4000 bundles of radishes per hour. Exactly as many as 20 harvest workers. It remains to be seen when the first mini radish robots will harvest radishes for hobby gardeners.
