How To Grow Radishes - Complete Growing Guide

Well hello everyone and welcome to another complete growing guide here on the Am I Gardener channel. Today is going to be talking about radishes. Radishes are an extremely easy plant to grow and so this growing guide might seem short and it might seem like I'm leaving a lot out. However if you follow the growing guide exactly like how I said you will not have a problem growing radishes. The reason is because radishes are a very fast turnaround vegetable and I love them for that because oftentimes young growers they really like to see the the gratification and the it kind of boosts your confidence as a gardener when you can get something and so the faster you can get something the faster your confidence can be boosted that you can in fact grow stuff. So I always like to start people off with with radishes because it's really 25 days till harvest and it's not hard to grow at all. So what we're going to first talk about is starting from seed or plants. You're going to have a far better success rate from starting from seed. I know it's a bit of a jump because most young gardeners like to start from starts at the greenhouse. However you get however if you get radish starts from the greenhouse they're just going to do poorly because the fact that radishes are a bulb. It's kind of a bulb slash root vegetable and the the fact is that the the plant it will do very poorly when it's transplanted because it damages all those tiny roots and it really just will end up hurting you in the long run. So start from seed. The next thing is make sure your soil is not high in any nutrients. I've left out a little space in this bed that does not have any nutrients at all. If you have lots of nitrogen in your soil even lots of compost you want to make sure that the compost has been leached out a little bit. I know it's kind of it's it's kind of counter counterintuitive to what you normally think however radishes they do not like lots of nitrogen otherwise they will form really beautiful tops but no radish the bulb which is actually what you're growing it for. So oftentimes that's the biggest problem is that people have too much nutrients in their soil and they get beautiful plants but then the way to pull it up they just have basically a red stem and that's not what you want. So again no nutrients is better. I mean obviously you need some nutrients don't grow in pure clay but they do better with little or less nutrients than you would a normal plant. Also it comes to time of year to plant. You want to make sure you plant in early spring. Do not let them go too late in the season. You want to start when the nights are still in the 40s. You don't want any hotter than that because that will cause the radish plant to just bolt. You want the plant to grow slowly so the earlier you can start the better. I typically start my radishes and I succession plant meaning I plant every week or so as soon as I can as soon as I can work the soil. So as soon as the snow melts and the soil can be kind of scratched up I'll plant some seeds and then in about two weeks I'll plant some more seeds and then in about two more weeks I'll plant some more seeds so that the entire growing season I have radishes to harvest. Also the next thing that we're going to get into is planting. So coming in close we're going to talk about spacing and soil pH and watering and all that good stuff as well. All right so we're going to start planting now. What you want to do is just sprinkle some seeds in your hand here and you want to just make a little line in the soil with your hand or a shovel. You want to make sure that line that little that little ditch you made is no deeper than a half an inch and what that's going to do is that's going to make sure that your your radish when it sprouts is going to be just at the top of the soil because if the if the bulb is below soil level the the pressure from the soil is actually going to press it press in on the bulb it's going to give you a smaller radish than you would had it been shallower in the soil. So shallower is better when it comes to radishes. Then all we're going to do is just give it a quick sprinkle and we're just going to sprinkle the seeds in and then when they sprout we're going to thin them. This is really important because thinning your radishes is very important. You want to thin your radishes to about two inches apart. They can be pretty close together which means you're going to get a lot of productivity but you still have to thin otherwise you're going to get just spindly roots because the pressure pushing in from another radish to another radish it's going to end up with a kind of a lopsided radish so that's always important as well. So now all we have to do is cover it up just give it a quick cover up there and then we're going to give it a water in. Now when it comes to watering you want to keep your radishes well watered. If you let them dry out you're going to see them crack and that's a big problem that gardeners have is that they let them dry out too much and then they split. The radishes like to be growing in a moist soil. Keep it moist all the time. Don't let it dry out and that's typically why you consider them an earlier spring vegetable as well is because in the spring it's the rainy season so they get constant rain and the soil is typically always damp at least so that's going to get you good radishes and it's really as simple as that. So there you go very simple am I not right? I mean seriously they are so simple to grow they mature quickly and so it's definitely a vegetable that I highly recommend growing. There's nothing there's nothing that beats a nice crisp radish and a salad in the early spring. It's very gratifying and helps you boost your confidence like I said so highly recommend growing it. Also if you would please post in the comments box below any growing guides that you would like to see and so post in the comments box below what you'd like to grow that way I can know what I have not done yet and so that that also helps me out. Another thing give this video a thumbs up if you're not already that helps me out. Subscribe if you haven't already that also helps me out and also for your own FYI here we also have a lot of other growing guides they are over at select videos select growing guides and that's going to give you a huge playlist of all the growing guides we've done and that's also going to help you out hopefully. So I will talk to you all later this is Luke from the MiGardener channel hoping you all are growing big or going home and I'll catch you all later. See ya. Bye.