Daikon Radishes take on my Sedona dirt..... and the dirt is winning!

Apr 16, 2022 12:46:50

Everyone says if you plant diakons they will grow deep down and help to break up really hard soils. I guess I got a bunch of whimpy ones because the dirt is winning. I enjoyed my row of diakons all last summer. I actually like the green tops the best, I add them to all my soups and mixed in with lots of vegies. So I let part of the row go to seed this winter/spring. So far, so good. Until I noticed that, instead of them growing deep into the soil they are pushing themselves up out of the ground!! What's up with that?

They were all planted good and deep last year, couldn't see the roots at all when I harvested them. And it's only gone below freezing maybe two nights this winter so I don't think I can blame it on the cold. I hand dug this bed down to about 18" and below that is Sedona dirt. I guess my dirt is tougher that the Diakons!

If anyone has other suggestions for edible plants that can do the same thing I would love to hear them. Why do all these weird things always happen to me? Thanks in advance.

Apr 16, 2022 13:53:57

Debbie Ann said, "So I let part of the row go to seed this winter/spring.

I feel the problem is that the seeds were not planted at the recommended depth.

Since you let the plants go to seed, the seeds just fell to the ground and sprouted.

I am not sure if anything can be done with the radishes this year.

Since you mainly like the greens, just go ahead and let them grow.

Next year maybe you can use organza bags to keep the seeds from landing on the ground so you can plant them.

There still may be some benefit to the ground though I don't know.

Apr 16, 2022 14:28:22

That's very interesting Debbie. Is it possible they are they going down as well as up? Have you lifted one or two to see how deep they go?
Just to clarify: these are the same ones that you were growing last summer, not new ones that have seeded in, right?
Many root vegetables grow just above the surface as they bulb up, so maybe this is a characteristic of the Daikon as it matures. I'm interested to see what experiences others have had.

Apr 16, 2022 14:38:12

If those are the daikon radishes that you planted and left in the ground, maybe what you are seeing is something different from what I thought.

I would at least pull one up to see what is going on.

I thought the first one on the left in the picture looked like it was growing in the ground with a second root growing out of the ground, though I wasn't sure that was what I was seeing.

Apr 16, 2022 14:45:19

Goodness, thank you both for trying to help me out! This is the end of the row I was harvesting from last summer. I left about 20 of them to go to seed. They were all planted good and deep last summer. Like I said... there were no roots showing above the dirt when I was enjoying them from June until November. I've pulled just a couple up now and they are going down 12-14" and then giving up. They just began to flower about 2 months ago and just now they are beginning to make their seeds so these seeds haven't matured yet and no seeds have dropped on the ground yet.

I always knew my Sedona dirt was tough. I usually use a mattock pic to get through it the first time. But I didn't think it was this tough!

Apr 16, 2022 15:54:42

For what it's worth, they usually grow up a bit out of the soil as well as down. That alone isn't indicative of a failed harvest. Going down 12-14 inches sounds about right for some varieties as well.

It's hard to get a good idea of scale, but my daikons this year ranged from carrot sized to about 3 inch in diameter.

Your daikons look reasonably well grown to me.

Apr 16, 2022 17:08:18

Thank you L. I think they did great. In fact, they are super easy to grow (even here in 105*+ all summer) , don't need much water, never wilt or complain, no freeloading bugs or creatures seem to want to eat them and it's super easy to save the seeds. I saved seeds the year before last from just 6 plants that were in a bed on the other side of my yard. I never even took them out of their shells. Never put them in the fridge. They sat in my garage all winter. And last spring when I broke the pods open and planted them I probably got 100% germination.

Can't ask for more than that. Well, yes I can! I very much like the taste of the greens but don't care so much for the roots. So over the winter I typed Diakon into the search box and spent lots of happy time looking through old threads trying to find some good recipes for the roots. Mostly I just found lots and lots of people that kept saying how they will drill down into the dirt and improve your soil. So, I thought that's another good reason to grow them. Until I read a piece by Bryant Redhawk where he said that.. to improve the soil you should leave the roots there to rot in the ground and his roots that had grown to about 3 feet took about 3 years to finally rot in the bed. O.K. I can't leave them there to rot because I need all of my beds. A girls' gotta eat!

But I would just like to understand why it didn't work for me. They didn't get too hot or too cold. I gave them very little water all winter so I would think that they would go deeper for moisture.

I'm very happy with my harvest. I would just like to know how I can do it better.

Thank you all and happy gardening, everyone.

Apr 16, 2022 18:04:01

I had the same thing happen with my "torpedo radishish", but none of mine were planted at depth, they were all broadcast.
The soil in question is mostly rubble, so maybe I'm asking to much.
The seed pods were my favorite my part to eat, the root, inedible even when slow roasted for hours.

What part of the root that does grow into the ground rots completely in my soil over a single winter.

It occurs to me that any root that can force itself deep into hard soil will likely be slow to decay.

Apr 16, 2022 19:29:55

I’m growing daikons at my new farm project where there is hard pan 6" down. The daikon roots are not growing into the hard pan at all. Instead, the roots turn 90 degrees, ending up with "L" shaped daikon roots. They look funny as all heck. Since identifying the location of the hard pan, I have manually busted it up. The radish roots surely couldn’t handle the job for me.

The next crop of daikon grew just fine. Some of the roots grew up above the soil level while others did not. I’m not sure what the difference was. But either way, I harvested a good crop. I do harvest when the roots are only about 8 to 10 inches long because that’s the preferred size around here. People like the younger roots.

Apr 16, 2022 20:09:43

Here's my daikon left to rot the past winter. It did drill a hole in hard clay but only went down less than 1 ft.

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