Did you know that radishes will grow over 4 feet tall?
I planted a pot of radish seeds in the greenhouse this December. The seeds took a month or perhaps even 6 weeks to germinate in the cold temperatures. While they were growing, I was actually able to eat 4 or 5 small ones, pulled out in the name of “thinning” before the majority of the plants started to grow seed stalks. I guess the winter weather was a bit too much stress for them.
Instead of just throwing them out, I decided to let the radishes go to seed…as an experiment.
The seed stalks kept growing and growing and growing. After growing about 4 feet tall, the stalk in the center of each radish opened up a flower very similar to what a bolted broccoli looks like. Some of my radishes grew white flowers and some grew pink flowers, although all the seeds came from the same packet. Some are still flowering now, almost 6 months after putting the seeds in the ground.
Now that most of the flowers have died back, seed pods are beginning to grow. They look like tiny green beans at the moment. I’ll update this post when they have grown up and dried so I can harvest the seed.
FOLLOW-UP POST ADDED BELOW:
Here is an update to my previous post about saving radish seeds.
Dried radish seed pods
I let the radish growth die naturally and dry outside to a nice tan color. I picked off the stems with the seed pods and had what you see above.
Green pod has turned light brown
Just like a pea or a bean, each dry pod contains a few radish seeds. Let’s open one up, shall we?
Hooray, seeds!
I expect the nice round ones are probably more viable than the flat wrinkled ones, since the ones I originally planted were all nice and round.
The verdict is that, yes, I can save radish seeds. And until I absolutely need to, I won’t. It’s a lot of extra work to get these seeds from a plant that would otherwise be picked in 25 or 30 days. I’ll consider it knowledge tucked away for a rainy day.
Posted by Randomability on May 4, 2009 at 2:41 am
4 feet?? That’s taller than my two small children… Hmmmm…. Maybe I ought to plant and just let them grow to see.
Posted by sarabclever on May 7, 2009 at 9:08 am
Apparently you can eat the seed pods–Barbara Damrosch had something on this recently in her column!
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on May 8, 2009 at 9:03 am
Yes, I had read that too! That would be quite a delicacy. Almost impossible to find in the store. Now I want to try them.
Posted by Brian on June 10, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Have you ever try eating the leaves
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on June 11, 2012 at 7:41 am
When radish plants are very small they taste like little radishes. But before the root grows larger the plant’s leaves grow bristly hairs on them that makes them a lot less tasty.
Posted by John on November 26, 2010 at 9:33 pm
I’ve left some radish plants growing in my garden because I was too late picking them for eating. They do indeed grow very very tall. I’m planning on collecting the seeds to use for planting some time.
Have you been successful in growing new plants from the seeds you collected?
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on November 27, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Yes, the seeds germinated fairly well! Thank you for stopping by!
Posted by raymond GreeN on April 29, 2011 at 12:15 pm
I’m close to harvesting some white beauty radish seeds, the flowers for mine were purple(they looked nice) but now have fallen and I can see pods forming. Just have to watch out for the pesky birds.
Posted by Richard on July 24, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Yup, I have some too. I came here wondering if I could pick the seeds now but it seems that I’ll have to wait until they get brown. A few of my plants grew radishes and they were tasty.
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on July 31, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Thank you for stopping by Richard! Stick around and watch for my newer posts once in a while too!
Posted by Leilani on July 19, 2012 at 11:06 am
Interesting! I had no idea what a radish seed looked like. I definitely plan on including radishes in my garden next year.
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on July 19, 2012 at 10:51 pm
Glad I could help. I love doing experiments like that one!
Posted by c ya on July 28, 2012 at 3:24 pm
of the leaf and pods im not a big fan, but i let almost half my radish patch seed out each year and eat crisp spicy sprouts all winter, along with the sunflower, gai lan and even fennel as a sprout, all easy, low/nothin fert. seeds keep all winter, spout easy, great flavours, highly nutritious, just gotta remember to reserve a few for next planting:)
nice lil blog dude
Posted by Jimmy Cracked-Corn on August 5, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Thank you. Radish sprouts sound good. I’ll have to look into bulk seed and try that.
Posted by Agi's Farmhouse Kitchen on August 9, 2012 at 6:39 pm
The radish plant when it goes to seed is really quite beautiful, almost hate to pull it out!
Posted by Nancy on October 7, 2012 at 10:20 pm
The green seed pods are excellent. They taste like….. radishes! And you get a lot of them on each plant. Our radishes just didn’t grow well as actual radishes, so we just let them flower and harvested the pods for salads. They are really crisp and yummy. I just harvested today the ones I let dry and am going to sprout them to eat.