The Capsule Garden

Much like shell art is over in Portlandia, I think it's safe to say that radish season is over in my neck of the woods. The weather has just warmed up too significantly as of late. If you saw my post from yesterday, I ended up harvesting some of those radishes as they didn't appear to be growing any more. I will post something about that in a few days or so. Upon sampling, they were much too spicy to my taste. I think the window of growth opportunity is over. I probably should have started in early spring or late winter but this was more of a fun experiment stemming from the shelter in place orders. Anyhow, I'll probably be plucking most of my radish plants in the coming days except for a few that are or might be bolting. They'll serve to make a nice dish of radish greens. Some strange looking radishes

I thought for today I'd leave the windowsill radish on the windowsill for this post. For the past few days it has been pretty dull. It seems the radish root isn't getting much larger so I probably won't post about it until harvest time comes around. But for today I wanted to show some pictures of my other radish plants. These ones I have growing on my balcony. The balcony overall gets less direct sunlight and less sunlight overall than the windowsill. These plants took much longer to grow because of that. However, they have attained sizes much larger now but that may be due to the fact they are in a largish pot. They originally were planted between some green onion that I planted. These green onions were the bottoms of grocery store green onion. Here's an image when the radishes started sprouting. This was a little over a month ago. The humble beginnings As of today, I'm still waiting for the green onion to grow large enough to actually be able to eat but that's...

I don't seem to be noticing much growth in the radish root lately. It seems growth is stagnating. I did give the plant a little bit of liquid fertilizer. Honestly, I'm not sure if it was the right fertilizer for the situation. I should have probably done more research. I used a fertilizer that is more for supporting green growth. I took the usually shots but not a lot to see. There was one thing I noticed was that the stem of the radish seems to be elongating. Almost like it might start bolting. I have a plant on my balcony that is clearly bolting. I really need to share some pictures of those plants soon. Anyway it is noticeable in the third photo of the elongation of the stem.  Day 38 Radish side view Day 38 Radish top view Am I bolting?

That's from the point of view of the radish and not myself, just for some clarification. The plant looks pretty similar to the pictures in day 36. The leaf on the left side in the side view picture is a bit more yellow however. Other than that there isn't a whole lot of difference that I can visually detect. I recently paid my radish plants outside on my balcony a visit. I inspected them a bit more closely than usually and noticed among about nine or ten radish plants there is one that has quite the large radish bulb. I'll post some pictures of that hopefully tomorrow. Stay tuned.  Day 37 side view of radish Day 37 top view of radish Day 37 close-up of radish bulb

Back on day 35 or my radish growing fun, I harvested one of two radishes that I had growing on my apartment windowsill. You can view that post here if you're interested. I figured I'd give a review of how the radish tasted. The radish is also almost comically small as you can see here in these photos: Yep, it was tiny compared to my (what I think is a regular-sized) hand but I wasn't going to let that stop me from chowing down on it. Eating my first born.. er first grown. First I chopped off the radish greens or leaves. I decided I'd just eat the root raw which tends to be the most common way to eat radishes. That or pickling them. I have to say, the taste and texture of the radish were actually quite delightful. For the most part it had a very mild, crisp, and fresh taste. That leads me to the top of the radish or the part directly below the leaves. That part was spicy! That took me by surprise. compared to the majority of the root, the top was very spicy tasting. No...

Yes, I've changed the title of the blog posts from windowsill radishes to windowsill radish. After harvesting one of the two it is now only a single one. It looks a little lonely in the pot now by itself after sharing the pot for 35 days with it's radish buddy. I've noticed that one of the true leaves on the plant is starting to yellow. There are still new leaves emerging though. The cotyledons are very dead at this point too. It's also interesting observing the plant closely that the cotyledons seem to almost be attached to the skin that is peeling from the radish bulb. Anyway, here are some pictures of the lone radish. The sad radish - side view on day 36 Day 36 top view of radish Definitely not centered in the pot

So day 35 rolled around and I was still committed to harvesting a radish - curious to see how it's grown. I decided to pull the radish that was already more exposed above the soil first. I had no idea how much of the radish was actually below the soil. Have a scroll through the images below to see the harvest. I suppose I should really be putting harvest in quotations. "Harvest." But after plucking the radish from the dirt, my first observation was, "wow, this radish is pretty small." But upon closer inspection and after cleaning off the dirt and stray roots, I got a sense that the radish was plumping up below the dirt. I think I probably should have let it grow longer but hey, my curiosity got the better of me and plus the seed packet said matures in 29 days. I'll be writing up another post to talk about the taste of the radish and the radish greens. But after plucking the radish, I have committed to leaving the other radish growing for at least another fiv...

Day 34, the eve before the great (jk) harvest! I've committed to unearthing at least one of the two radishes on day 35. Will I be surprised by what I see and what lies beneath the soil? Or will it pretty uch be a case of wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) in terms of the size of the radish? I ended up taking these photos a little late in the day (er... evening). I was taking a closer look at the foliage and noticed the leaves seem to feel a little crisp or crispy. They almost appeared to be changing color around the edges of the leaves but it may also be related to the florescent light I was looking at them under. They just seemed to feel a little dry and not super fresh. I don't know if that's a sign that it's ready to be harvested or not. There are still new leaves growing too. Anyway, as started we shall see on day 35! Day 34 Side View Day 34 Top View Wow, those cotyledons sure are shriveled here A bit of a closer look at the radishes

It's day 33 of radish growth. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am waiting till day 35 to harvest one or perhaps both of the radishes. Compared to the previous day (day 32) there still hasn't been much noticeable growth with the plants. There are still new leaves sprouting out from the center of the plants. No sign of bolting or anything like that. I've been giving the plants more water the past few days making sure to completely saturate the soil each time. Two more days till I harvest! Day 33 Side View Day 33 Top View Cotyledons continue to shrivel Splitting/peeling of outer layer

This is a bit of a boring update as I put in the title. Things don't appear too different from the previous day, day 31. The cotyledons are even more yellow today. Aside from that I don't have too much other observations to offer about the radish plants today. I think the radish root bulbs are plumping up still though. Without further ado, here are the photos: Day 32 Side View Day 32 Top View Yellowing of cotyledons Close-up of radishes

The radishes have been growing for 31 days at this point from the day I plopped the seeds into the dirt. As of day 31, I've noticed that the cotyledons, or embryonic leaves, for both plants have finally started to yellow and die. I was curious how long these would last. They've grown very large throughout the life of the plants thus far too. The radish bulbs do seem to be plumping up nicely too. I'm excited to see what they look like on the day I decide to pluck them from the dirt. I'm really curious to see if there's much more to them than meets the eyes (above the dirt in this case).  Day 31 Side View Day 31 Top View Radish Close-up Good-bye Cotyledons

It's here, the fated day 30, and I can say these radishes definitely need some more time to grow. I suppose I could harvest them to see how they look and taste but I'm going to commit to another five days. Below are the usual shots of the plants.  Day 30 Side View Day 30 Top View The radishes after 30 days

One day away from day 30. I was curious so I did some online browsing for the type of radishes I am growing, which in this case are German giants. According to the website it says you can harvest them when as small as marbles or as large as a baseball while remaining mild, sweet, and crispy. I suppose that is encouraging as I do want to grow these a bit longer to see if they'll grow larger in size. I was initially worried that leaving them in the dirt too long would cause them to become woody but from what I read online (who knows if it's accurate) they shouldn't become woody. Encouraging nonetheless. I also wonder how large the root is under the dirt versus what I can see above ground.  Side View Top View A close-up shot Reverse close-up. Notice the spots on the right radish. 

We're two days away from day 30. I'm pretty sure the radishes need more time to reach a more optimal size at this point. I'm getting more of a sense that perhaps the outer layer of the radishes is just peeling off or being out grown. Underneath the peeling exterior, the root is the same color. I posted the standard shots for this post along with a close up of a leaf. I was admiring how the stem of the leaves are now showing some reddish edges towards the base. I'm not sure how visible it is in my photo, but the reddish lines show up as parallel lines on the stem. Just very neat to see the plant further develop! Soil is nice and moist as you can see. I've taken to watering the plant several times during the day to make sure the plants are getting plenty of water.  Side View Top View I present... the radishes. Leaf stem