Small Garden? Large Garden? Never Tried a Garden?
Do you know how to enrich the soil
without chemicals?
Do you know how to enrich the soil
without chemicals?
1. Buy Daikon Radish seeds, sometimes called torpedo radish seeds.
2. About April Fool's Day, clear the ground to plant the seeds. Use a rake or a spade to create a top layer of soil that is loose, such that the seeds can fall into the cracks or crevices of the soil.
3. Between April Fool's Day and tax day, April 15, either throw the seeds on top of the ground and rake to cover the seeds with soil, or use a spade to strike the ground for the seeds to fall into slits you create, and smooth over the ground.
4. Allow the radishes to grow like weeds. Soon, you will see the radish sprouts.
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The root bottoms grow fast and deep. This loosens the lower levels of the soil, and at the same time, brings the minerals in the soil upwards to the top layers of the soil, and puts nitrogen in the soil all along the roots.
Then you will see the tops grow the first pairs of leaves. These first leaf pairs are very tender. ------------------>
4. Some of these leaves may be picked and used to make a slightly bitter, but very tasty salad.
5. As the radish tops get longer, and less tender, saute with garlic and onions.
6. About ten days before you are comfortable that it is time to plant tomatoes and similar vegetables, pull up as many radish roots as you desire for eating. Then use your garden spade to chop the green tops onto the ground.
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Then dig about 6' to 8'' deep and turn over the spade full of soil. The radishes are now "green manure".
7. Just before planting, turn over the soil again. If you planted gardens before, you will see and love how well this works to make the soil nutrient rich. If this is your first time, use the spade or a hoe, and then a rake to reduce the clumps in the soil, so that you may make holes or rows for seeds.
You may retain a patch of the radishes to allow to grow into those long, large Daikon Radishes sold in the grocery store for lots of money.
Enjoy the joy of digging, the joy of planting, the joy of harvesting.
8. Repeat this process after harvest but do not chop down the tops. Daikon Radishes are annuals, so the winter cold will kill the plants that remain after your fall salads and sautes. The dead plant material, tops and bottoms, will compost in place, making the soil all that more easy to work in the spring, and nutritious too.
If you plant on a hillside, consider a permaculture trench to conserve rain water.