Tag Archives: Radishes

Todays’s Harvest Basket 5/24

Posted on May 25, 2017 by Patsy Bell | Leave a comment

I gathered our dinner directly from the garden today.

Still gathering cool season crops. Peas, radishes, green onions, kale, chervil and cilantro.

The egg basket is over flowing, so we will have a picnic favorite, herb deviled egg with dinner tonight. I have lots to lacy-leaved chervil and picked extra for my morning omelet. Delicate chervil is only in the garden for another week or so. It is my favorite fair weather herb.

What’s for Dinner?

Kale salad with green onions, home-made herb vinaigrette, topped with hemp seeds and currants.
Deviled farm fresh eggs sprinkled with chervil and chives.
Open-faced radish sandwiches, a springtime-only special: Simply fresh thin-sliced sourdough or baguette, fresh butter, salt, thin sliced radishes.

Chervil Anthriscus cerefolium, mild flavored, delicate lacy leaves. If you don’t grow your own, you probably will not have the privilege of enjoying this fresh herb in the spring and fall.

I use chervil (pronounced SHER-vil) in delicate dishes, like tomorrows breakfast omelet. Sprigs of chervil will top the deviled eggs and, in a non-mayonnaise based potato salad.

Chervil is a delicate annual, growing only in cool weather. It’s a great herb for succession planting. Add a few seed to the garden every week in the spring to extend the season as long as possible.

Fines herbes, the French herb blend uses chervil. The combo includes chervil, parsley, chives and French tarragon. Fines herbes (pronounced feens-erb) is best used fresh because the herbs lose a lot of flavor when dried.

Sweet and tender spring peas will be tossed into a stir-fry or used as dippers on a veggie tray.

2 Cool Seasons

Remember, anything you grow as an early spring crop can be grown a a fall crop. Sometimes veggies are even more successful since the soil is already warm. This fall, give peas a chance.

Spring kitchen bonus.

Pick chervil, chives and cilantro often, to encourage plant growth. Keep the cut stems in a glass of water on the kitchen counter, making it easy to add fresh herbs to any dish.

The peas, radish and herbs are grown from seed purchased at Renee’s Garden Seed.

When fresh herbs are not available, get Fines Herbes at Penzeys Spices .

My handy husband, Jeff, made the harvest basket.

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Today’s Harvest Basket

Posted on June 14, 2016 by Patsy Bell | Leave a comment

Early garden harvests

Green beans, baby carrots, garlic scapes. lettuce, radishes and radish flowers.

Garlic scapes are used in pesto and pickled.

Garlic scapes are green stems and unopened flower buds of hard-neck garlic varieties.

Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and a slight sweetness, which makes them a prized addition in the kitchen. You can find them in the early summer at farmers’ markets. If you grow your own garlic, trim the scapes off before their flowers open.

This forces the plant to focus on bulb.

6/6

Radishes are easy

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Patsy Bell | Leave a comment

Radish row markers

Pink Punch perfect globes that are crisp and mild.

Put radishes to work in your spring garden. Because the seeds germinate quickly, plant them at the beginning and end of other vegetable rows as living markers.
Mix in rows or blocks of lettuces and spring greens with radish seed to help space and thin young plants.
Sow every two weeks throughout the spring, for an extended season. Save extra seed to sow again in the fall.

The first garden treats each spring are crunchy and spicy radishes.

The star of the salad garden was Crimson Crunch. A bright red radish with snow-white flesh, these perfectly round radishes are crisp and crunchy. If I could grow just one radish, it would be Crimson Crunch.

I planted these radishes in the corner of the garden and forgot about them. When I discovered them, they were huge. Probably, they measure 1 ½ inch diameter. And, they are NOT HOT!

Watermelon radishes.

These are beautiful red globes are solid and crispy, not spongy. Crimson Crunch is mild, perfectly smooth and round. This fall, they grew faster, milder and bigger than last spring.

Another pretty radish that is the star of my fall garden is the imported French Breakfast. Very crisp bi-color radishes, grow quickly in cylindrical shapes and perfect ball shapes.

Black radish, Purple Plum radish.

French Breakfast radish from Renee’s Garden includes both shapes in one packet. I still have a few in the ground, mostly just to see how well they keep.

Sparkler radishes are great dippers on the veggie tray.

When you order radish seed, order extra. They are always a good spring salad accent and I will always plant them in a fall garden. Red globe radishes have plenty of potassium, vitamin C and folate.

Because they come up so quickly, use radishes as row markers as you plant other vegetables in the garden. Mix them and plant in with lettuce and spinach greens. Peppery radish sprouts are great on salad or sandwiches.

Serving suggestions:

Crostini with herb butter and radish slices.
Add snow peas, chopped radish to chicken or tuna salad.
Egg salad with grated radish and chopped chives
Eat radishes slices with a thin layer of sweet butter or olive oil and light sprinkle of salt.

“Petit Dejeuner” radish. Thinly slice radishes and serve on a lightly buttered baguette slices.

Radishes are also the last thing out of the garden in the fall. In mid November after a couple of frosts, I picked radishes in my zone 6 southeast MO USA garden.

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