Sweet

There's so much I could say about sweet peas and none of it practical or edible. I grow sweet peas for beauty, scent and memories. With perfect timing the first 'Heirloom Cupid' blossom began opening today, when I needed a sign to keep trying, hoping and trusting, to be patiently persistent but not blindly stubborn, to accept my balcony garden's sunlight and size limitations, and to follow nature's schedule rather than impose my own.

More words to follow in a later post. For now, I'm just going to enjoy the shades of pink that emerged from the little brown seed I buried in April.

Ribbons of Kale

Bliss. A state of flow.

As I uploaded these photos while writing this post, my mind & mood returned to last Sunday morning, when I was cutting kale in the balcony garden. I had felt in harmony with the morning's gentle rhythms & melodies: the singing birds and dozing Westie; the plants reflecting the sun's light & warmth; the breeze gently tapping the blind against the open window.

In another time and place, removing stems and ribs from greens and slicing the leaves into narrow ribbons would have been mind-numbingly tedious but that morning it was soothing -- a perfect fit. Any other task, particularly one producing sound above 30 decibels, would have been incongruous.

But enough reverie. Time to be practical. In the rest of this post, I'm going to share my gardening notes &  links.

Growing notes:

1. Inspiration: Back in March I hadn't yet finalized my seed list & planting schedule, but I wasn't planning to sow kale until late summer for a fall/winter crop. A new blog find, though -- the inspirational, educational 365 Days of Kale --  convinced me to move up the sowing date to early spring.
2. Seeds: Italian Heirloom Kale 'Lacinato'.
3. Container: 26 cm (10-inch) glazed ceramic pot.
4. Soil: organic potting soil mix amended generously with vermicompost.
5. Location: south-facing balcony (with walls on east, west & north sides plus and overhanging roof, which limit the amount of direct sunlight). Plants from the middle to front of the deck receive about 5 to 6 hours of direct sunlight from April through June. I moved the plants to take advantage of the best light or provide partial shade on hot afternoons.
6. Sowing: Directly sowed seeds on the 4th of April.
7. Germination: Noticed first little sprout on the 10th of April.
8. Growth phase: A week later thinned seedlings to about 2 inches (5 cm) apart even though package directions said to thin to 10 to 12 inches apart. I planned to keep thinning gradually over the weeks, tossing the baby leaves into salads, but I actually did very little thinning. I'm sure this kept all the leaves small, which suited me as I didn't want to grow T. rex sized leaves of this plant also known as dinosaur kale.
9. Harvest: On June 14th, I harvested nearly all the leaves from this plant. I forgot to weigh the harvest but the leaves filled a medium salad bowl.

On The Berries I've written a companion post with a recipe and some cooking and nutrition links.

Recommended reading

• 365 Days of Kale This is one of Diana Dyer's blogs (now on hiatus). Diana is the lovely, knowledgeable dietitian, gardener and writer who inspired me to grow kale in the spring to early summer garden.

• Cool Kale

• Kale: The Phytonutrient Master

• Three Great Spinach Alternatives

• Growing Kale in the Home Vegetable Garden

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd love to hear about your experiences growing kale, particularly in containers and with different varieties. Please share your growing tips and stories in the comments.

Dainty, feisty breakfast radishes

  

'Petit Dejeuner' Radishes
"Dainty with a feisty taste" is how @sophiemostly describes the ideal French Breakfast Radish. I harvested this crop on June 2nd, 59 days after sowing.
...................................................................................................................................................

The first thing I'm going to do is send you away to read The Radish on the beautiful Nourish Me. Lucy's prose and photographs make me feel like I've feasted when I haven't eaten a bite and illuminate aspects of food I'd forgotten or never known. And perhaps like me, after experiencing this lush post you will admire and desire this humble root even more.

..............................................................................................................

Now I'll assume (and hope) you've returned to Greens & Berries, nourished by Lucy's post, your mouth watering, craving pickled radishes & wondering how to grow your own crop of Raphanus sativus. In this post I'm going to share with you all I've learned so far. Keep in mind I'm a novice needing more radish education as I've completed only one crop cycle of sowing, tending, harvesting and tasting.

Growing radishes

After harvesting my first crop last week, I found these two resources:

• Barbara Damrosch, in this Kitchen Gardener's International article, asks us to "rethink the radish" and suggests crisp, crunchy, colourful, zesty (and all its synonyms) varieties to try in our gardens.
• According to this NYT article, radishes are "easy to sprout" (this I knew) but "hard to grow right" (this I didn't know, thankfully, or I may not have tried them in my limited space). The article explains how to grow the ideal radish, "a crisp, delicately piquant root, nice for slicing into salads or eating out of hand with a sprinkle of salt and a slice of buttered bread."

Now that you and I know the "right way" to grow radishes, I'm going to tell you what I actually did:

1. I grew 8 radishes in a 20 cm (8-inch) diameter pot, though I probably would have gotten bigger roots if I'd planted the seeds deeper and thinned out more seedlings.
2. I used a mixture of 3/4 organic potting soil and 1/4 vermicompost and did not amend the soil after sowing.
3. Here are photos of the seedlings 18 days and 29 days after sowing.
4. The weather was mostly just right (cool) in April and early May though there were many warm, summer-like days from mid-May on. I kept the soil moist, never letting it dry out completely but not soaking it either.
5. The growing radishes received full sun for no more than 5-6 hours each day, usually between 8 am and 2 pm.
6. They grew next to pots of kale, broccoli raab and mixed greens creating a pretty mix of leafy textures. Though I didn't have any flowering ornamental plants in May, I think these edible greens would make a lush filler for a brightly-coloured thriller.

Eating radishes

Here's a handful of recipes from my food network. So I can try them all, I've written a note-to-self to sow more radish seeds next time and sow them every week during the cool weather.

• Pickled Radishes from Nourish Me (recommended by the the incomparable Kathryn Elliott - one of my favourite sources of healthy & delicious recipes)

• New Moon Radishes, Radish Leaves Rasam, & Fresh Radish Chutney: 2 cups fresh mint, 25 g radish, 1/4 onion, salt, green chilli, 1/2 tablespoon lime juice. Blend. Add water to thin if necessary (recommended by @Ganga108, a new online friend)

• Asparagus Salad (with radishes & broccolini)  from 101 Cookbooks.

Two mornings ago I finally solved my pleasant quandary: what to do with my tiny harvest of petite radishes. Though I'd received the tasty suggestions from my food network, by Sunday morning the crop had dwindled to just four small roots so I made a quick decision to slice them thinly as a topping on toast spread with creamy cheese. The radishes added a pop of colour, crunch & a subtle piquancy. Definitely dainty but not quite feisty -- more like politely assertive.

Nutrition (or the section where the gardener puts on her dietitian hat)

Though I've never seen radishes on any "healthiest foods you should be eating" list, they aren't just water & cellulose --  they're tasty, low-energy, good sources of fibre, vitamin C and potassium.  (See complete nutrition profile here.)

..............................................................................................................

So now I'd like to satisfy my new breakfast craving and harvest another crop in about 40 or fewer days (before it gets too hot) plus increase my radish knowledge and recipe collection. Which varieties of radishes are you growing this year? Do you have any growing or eating tips? Please share them in the comments below.