The Truth About Radishes

Did you know that radishes are bitter? They're all nice and innocent, red and white like a candy cane, then BAM the spice kicks up when you're about three chews in. Spicy like you put a lot of pepper on them. I had no idea. All this time I thought radishes were kind of unnecessary. Sure, they add a little color and the nutritionists like that, but it didn't go much farther than that for me. Then I ate Shelby's Radish.* I wondered if it was my soil or if I'd done something wrong, but luckily I was on the phone with my mom who confirmed that radishes are indeed spicy - good radishes, that is. I guess I'd never had a good, fresh radish. Good thing radishes are about the easiest thing you can grow in your garden because I'm going to plant some more, and I'll have to find some recipes that highlight their flavor.


*Shelby urged me to plant the radishes. Shelby must have known that radishes have a nice little kick to them. Shelby did not harvest her radish before she left the continent, so I had to eat it in her honor. It was excellent, Shelby, thanks!

Complete Salad

For years...since the first veggies I planted in Chicago in 2004 to be exact...I have desired to grow sufficient vegetables that I could have one complete salad all grown at home. In addition to growing several different kinds of vegetables, this required all of the vegetables to ripen at the same time. It finally happened! My first complete salad: red leaf lettuce, snap peas, cucumbers, and a yellow carrot. You can see the joy on my face as well as Mr. Salad's.

Bad blogger eats veggies

I'm such a bad blogger! My apologies to all of my devoted fans out there (including those of you I had to remind to read this)! Perhaps I've just been too busy in the garden? Here's what's new:

1) Snap peas are AWESOME! The longer you leave them on the plant the fatter and sweeter they get.

2) The broccoli is producing little florets, but they are very loose and go to flower very quickly. All the web chatter says this makes for inedible, bitter broccoli but Shelby tried some last night and said it was tasty, flowers and all.

3) Lettuce is still kicking, in fact finally producing fuller more compact heads just like real lettuce you buy in the store!

4) Strawberries ripen every few days or so but some critter keeps chewing them off. I got one full plump one tonight.

5) Raspberries, feared to be completely overwhelming, are amazing. They taste like store-bought with added sugar. Yum!

On the flipside...

-Cucumbers never showed up. I planted plants around the fourth of July and they look like they're going to bear fruit. Added some zucchini also.

-Carrots look great but are growing slowly and are all tangled in each other because I didn't thin them (I was overzealous). I'm banking on survival of the fittest to kill the little ones and let the big ones grow straight, but I'm going to let them grow another month if possible.

-Peppers, left in their starts too long, seem to have gotten stunted because they're not growing even now that they're in yummy compost. Oh well. Next year!

So, vegetables are doing great! I've also been busy landscaping and building the deck but those will be posts for other days...stay tuned.

Lettuce

Today I harvested my first head of lettuce. It was great! I grew it from seeds planted in late April. The lettuce was slightly more bitter and dare I say more flavorful than lettuce I get in the store. Much to my surprise, there was only one bug on the whole head and not that much dirt. I think the midnight slug attack from a few weeks ago paid off - the lettuce had been chewed in and out and through by the slimy nocturnal creatures so in one weekend I initiated every slug attack I had heard of:

1) Go out with a headlamp in the dark and pick them off (Eeew. Between the lettuce and the dahlias I got about 50.).
2) Put coffee grounds around the base of the plant (thanks to the barista at Victrola who gave me a whole bag).
3) Sprinkle eggshells around the base of the plant (no, they don't smell like rotten eggs).
4) (I was actually too lazy for this one...) Put a cupful of beer half deep in the soil and let them clamour to the "bar" and get drunk and die. Poor suckers don't know when to say when.
5) Apply Sluggo to the soil. Now, Sluggo is not labeled as organic but every organic-friendly garden store sells it. Technically it's made from iron phosphate which "occurs naturally in the soil." When slugs eat it, they feel full and stop eating so they starve to death. (more information here)

Frankly, I think #5 was the one that did the trick. The others look nice and organic and are much more natural than the Sluggo option, but the darn stuff really seems to work. Next time maybe I'll try random assignment of slug control mechanism, but for now I'm happy to have a home-grown salad.

First taste

I ate a strawberry this morning - right from my garden! Unfortunately, so did some other animal, and they left half of it in the bed next to the plant it was stolen from. Who was that varmint? Neighbor kitty? Well, whomever it was, I hope they learned that they don't like strawberries and leave the rest for me. It was a darn good strawberry.

On broccoli

My broccoli fell over. I don't really get how a whole head of broccoli is going to grow on those skinny little stalks. It's growing great, big, tough leaves that I want to chop into some pad see eiw. But is it supposed to fall over or was that the fault of the robins who are constantly pecking in the beds (on account of my vigorous worm population - yay!)? So far the robins have done little damage except to one pea plant that's coming back. Or was the broccoli trampled by neighbor cat who, I hope, is no longer using the bed as a litter box?

Well, I didn't think the broccoli was supposed to fall over so I propped it up with a little mound of soil. I then looked online and found out that broccoli plants grow to be 2-2.5 feet tall! And it grows multiple heads. "Removing the central head stimulates the side shoots to develop for later picking." says the UofI extension website. Wow! 3 heads per plant, 4 plants = 12 heads of broccoli? Fingers crossed!

Confession

I bought Round Up.

The weeds were out of control. Chickweed, mustard seed, dandelion, individual spears of grass growing 2 feet high with a root system as long and tangled as the Paris Metro. Not to mention that I have to kill all the grass in the yard in order to plant over it. But how to do that without destroying the environment? Perfectly Natural Weed & Grass Killer, of course! One $20 bottle covers, oh, about 10 square feet. I think my backyard is about 1,000. Despite that, I was optimistic. I sprayed bottle after bottle of the stuff and it did actually work, complete with a lovely, lingering clove smell that must have made my neighbors wonder what was really going on in the pink loft. 6 bottles later, though, I wondered if dumping all of this clove oil, citric acid, Lecithin, and "82% other" was really better for my soil than Round Up, the toxic-while-wet farm-industry standard. The claims are vehement on both sides. "Keep away from pets and children for 6 hours." "It's the only thing that kills the weeds on my coffee farm and allows me to plant what I want." "It breaks down into ingredients found naturally in soil." What is a girl to believe? This girl finally believed that using one-quarter as much product for one-fifth the price to achieve the same result would be worth it for the initial project, to hopefully kill the weed infestations on my property so I'll be able to manage it organically for the rest of our time together. Cross your fingers/stems for me!