Guest post by Susan Dieterlen
I should know better, but I’ve planted radishes again. In this my 40th year of growing vegetables, I can count on one hand the number of times my efforts have yielded good radishes. Look at them there in the photo: vibrant red orbs, bursting with sweet-spicy radishness. You know why I took a picture of that crop? Because it was like Bigfoot strolling through the garden: so unlikely you can’t believe your eyes.
Radishes are inevitably included in the “for beginners” or worse, “for children” collections in seed catalogs, a statement I can scarcely type without snorting. Weather too hot, too dry, too cold then too hot, or just too…wrong? You’ve got atomic mothballs or wizened red curlicues. Usually with lush tops, to taunt you. But at least they are a fast crop, sometimes over and done within a month, which provides you with multiple chances to fail with them before frost. What fun.
A solitary handsome carrot acting like it’s nothing special
What’s worse? Carrots. Another of the usual suspects on the “easy to grow” list. Only a real sadist would encourage growing carrots with children. Notoriously slow to sprout, carrots may eventually deign to grow promising frilly tops, suckering you into believing orange treasure waits below ground. Spoiler: it doesn’t. What’s underground may be a shriveled yellowish stub, or even a fairly reasonable looking carrot that hides its tough chewiness and utter lack of sweetness until you get to the kitchen.
The best reason to grow carrots is actually artistic, which is the most charitable way to describe the contorted octopus that you’ll find at the end of those lush carrot greens, should your soil be less than 100% perfect: constantly moist yet somehow composed of loose sand.
For pure passive-aggression in the garden, though, you cannot beat dill and cilantro. Both self-sow with abandon, popping up everywhere – except where you deliberately plant their seeds with your own hands, lovingly tending them, weeding them, watering them. Last year I had five successive plantings of dill die. Five. Guess what’s just popped up in the garden on its own? Dill. If you listen close, you can hear that seedling snickering. Side note: I have no idea what it takes to keep dill bearing season long. Possibly some kind of incantation.
“But what,” you ask, “can my novice gardener friends grow, if not these?” Steer them toward these, my top unsung easy crops for the vegetable garden:
Look at those pole beans, growing without a care!
– Beans. All of ’em, but especially green beans. The seeds are big and easy to handle, the seedlings look like something important that you shouldn’t pull up, and there’s no angst about when a green bean is ready to pick. If it looks like a green bean, it’s ready. Your biggest problem with growing beans is rabbits eating the plants, but you can shoo them away while you’re out there cursing at the radishes.
– Zucchini. You saw this coming, right? Zucchini are nearly fool-proof to grow, which is why every fool is trying to give them away come September. (No one ever tries to sneak a bag of homegrown carrots onto your porch, do they?) Don’t be that fool: one plant is plenty, unless you are truly zucchini-mad. But again, they have big seeds, big don’t-pull-me-up sprouts, and they grow fast, which is a delight until they start churning out monster zukes overnight.
– Special mention to mustard greens and all their Asian kin, like tatsoi and mizuna. They sprout almost before you’ve got the seed in the ground, are harvest-sized in a flash, and are happy to grow in any weather short of a polar vortex – but they are also host to a legion of insect pests that are nearly impossible to keep at bay. My best advice is to grow these plants, and anything else in the cabbage family, in cold weather, which will work, even though it sounds crazy. Failing that, you must embrace the obsession of picking the creepy-crawlies off them, either in the garden or in the kitchen. Or spray them. Or develop a strong stomach for getting plenty of accidental protein with your greens. A two-for-one dish: what could be easier than that?
Susan Dieterlen is a lifelong gardener, in addition to/in spite of having been a professional landscape architect for 20+ years. When she’s not cursing at carrot sprouts, she runs DeftSpace Lab, a consulting practice for sustainable communities, and “30% Wild,” a podcast about scary wildlife near people.
Same problems here with radishes and carrots. But if you let the radishes bolt,the seeds are yummy on salads. No matter when I plant cilantro it is not ready when the tomatoes and peppers are for pico de Gallo.
Absolutely agree with that timing issue! “Salsa gardens” always seem like an empty promise to me because of this. That cilantro (should it come up) will be long done with its little sprint by the time those tomatoes finish their marathon.
I have a packet of Rattail Radish seed here that I have yet to try, because it sounded too odd to pass up. I bet it’s a lot like your bolted seeds.
You have strengthened my disinterest in growing veggies. Other than a tomato plant, I don’t bother. That’s what farmers’ markets are for.
Love a good farmers’ market! Although I do tend to get suckered into trying to grow more things by all that gorgeous bounty in one place.
Thank you for so eloquently putting my experience into words. New to Garden Rant via Danger Garden. I feel like I’ve found my people and you all speak my language. Radishes – fail, I too was lured w/ the beginner promise. I don’t even like radishes. Cilantro – so so, not enough to garnish my food. Carrots – many fails, from using old seeds. It seems like every year, I forget my fails, and start over with old seeds from past years. I’ve smartened up, no more old seeds. One time, on a whim, I bought a purple pak choi start. You know what’s coming next, it became slug food. I put broken clay shards, of course it didn’t work. And the shards deterred from the pretty purple leaves. I now mostly grow perennial edibles. Thank you for steering me in the right direction w/ beans and zucchinis and letting me know I’m not alone in my fails.
You are welcome, and good luck! All the cabbage family, like that pak choi, are really difficult to grow in a regular summertime garden without heavy doses of pesticide. Even then, the ones that need to head up, like cabbages or pak choi, are still finicky. I think they all really want to be growing in northern Europe, which is really super-not the climate I’m working with in my garden!
Wow! I feel so much better about my veg growing attempts over the past few years. Honestly, I’m more into flowers, but since retiring from my job in landscaping I thought I should grow some vegetables. How hard can it be? I’m in zone 8 so I quickly realized that cool weather crops are the way to go, but even those can be tricky some years. This summer I’m growing French greens beans and they seem to be a success. But I know it can go sideways at any time. I have always wondered about carrots and many other things I’ve had no luck growing. Thanks for the reassuring rant.
You are not alone, Roxann! Growing vegetables anytime but summer is a real secret weapon, at least up here in Connecticut where I am, but so many things grow better then. Good luck with those beans!
Love the rant. My experience exactly which is why I leave vegetables to the pros (farmers) although as I write I do have 3 heirloom tomatoes which I fully expect to either be eaten by squirrels, insects, shrivel up or rot. I really don’t know how I will handle it if they actually produce (gasp) edible tomatoes.
Thanks! Heirlooms are always a gamble for me. When they succeed, they can be fantastic, but they do get every tomato problem in spades. A real high risk/high reward scenario. Good luck with it!
This made me laugh… “Bigfoot” :)) and also feel a little better about myself with regards to the things in the garden that fail. I get far more pleasure out of my flowers than my edibles, with all their needs and pests and, if I’m lucky, their bountiful fruits – just when I’m heading out for a three week holiday.
So true – everything really comes into its own as soon as you leave on vacation! That zucchini is just lying in wait to hear the car pull out of the driveway! LOL
I, too, feel so much better about my experiences with radishes and carrots. Thanks, Susan!
ditto for everything said except zucchini. all i can grow is a beautiful [plant with hardly ever
a unowhat. however, i still keep trying. jonjonpolvado920gmail.com
My two cents on getting those beautiful zukes to bear is to hand pollinate them or choose a parthenocarpic variety. Even with a decent number of pollinators around, I usually have to hand pollinate the zukes at the beginning of the season. Worth a try, anyway.
Time and time again, I feel complete, justified and wholly confirmed in my gardening opinions and experience all just by reading Garden Rant! Who knew all these years thinking that I was a terrible person with a bad attitude because my “easy-to-grow” radishes were always red pea sized stringy things and my carrots orange stringy things too! .. ahhhhh but ask me to grow zucchini and I will prevail!
The bad attitude is wholly on the part of those radishes and carrots, Annie!
I haven’t tried growing radishes much because I just plain forget about them until it’s too late to plant them. Same with carrots. My soil is totally wrong for carrots, anyway. Here in north Texas, fall through winter, into early spring is the time to grow most of what you struggle with – the radishes, carrots, leafy greens of all kinds, cucurbits; well, almost every vegetable except tomatoes, squashes and beans. Okay, okra and corn in the summer too. I envy northerners that can have their home grown lettuce and tomatoes, too, at the same time, for their BLTs.
To me the biggest fails are squashes of all kinds, including zucchini, (squash bugs and worse – squash vine borers) and tomatoes. I gave up trying to grow any kind of squash, including zucchini, years ago.
Tomatoes are actually one of the hardest crops to grow, because so much can and does go wrong with them. My last two attempts have resulted in tomatoes tasting like I bought them at the discount grocery store in the middle of winter. I tried different varieties, too.
I’ve gardened in several states, but never farther south than Indianapolis, so Texas gardening is an unknown country to me, Sally. You may need to write your own southern rant! Cool season gardening is surprisingly productive and easy, though, even up here in Yankeeland (I’m in Connecticut). More people should give it a try, but I think people need a full 9 months to recover/forget after summer before trying again.
Just an edit to my comment. When I wrote cucurbits, I meant cole crops. Cucurbits definitely are summer crops here, not winter.
Susan, I long for a lengthier winter. We barely have time to wipe off the sweat before it gets hot again! although a 9 month winter might be a little too long for me. 😉
Sally, no problem, I just thought you had a really hot winter for growing those curcurbits! I will believe any tall tale about how hot it is in Texas! 🙂
Sally, have you tried delicata squash? They are gorgeous plants with silvery leaves, I had no issues with powdery mildew or squash vine borers, and the bush variety means no need for staking.
Almighty YES, to the 40 years. Not that I’m trying to win a contest concerning veggies and especially radishes but I’ve been planting them since 1972. I can only remember two years that the little buggers were fabulous and alas, I had not planted enough of them.
Volkvette, that’s part of the radish mindgame. When you get that 1 in 25 year harvest that’s really good, you want a lot of radishes, so you plant too many all those other 24 years. 🙂
Veggie gardening requires fortitude and patience, plus knowing when the hail is coming. I thought I might try this year, but the hail got my tomatoes. Will take a while to get up the gumption to try again. Like Susan, it may be best to just go to the farmers market.
My sympathies about the hail, Jenny!
BLESS YOU for this rant. Carrots yielded me beautiful foliage for bouquets and a pitiful assortment of pinky sized veggies. Radishes either turned woody or bolted immediately. I’ll stick to tomatoes, beans and delicata squash!
Thanks! It is reassuring to know how many other radish-challenged gardeners are out there