The classic garden radish. Cherry Belle is a lovely mild-spicy radish that is great in salads. It is easy to grow and fast growing — ready in 30 days or so from sowing.
Radishes are a veggie we need to pay more attention to for their high nutritional value — both their roots and leaves.
First, let’s take a look at the nutritional value of radish roots.
The paper ‘Effects of Glucosinolate-Enriched Red Radish (Raphanus sativus) on In Vitro Models of Intestinal Microbiota and Metabolic Syndrome-Related Functionalities)’ summarizes the nutritional value of radish roots:
“[Radish roots] contain various minerals, nutrients, and bioactive compounds, including polysaccharides, organic acids, phenolic compounds, alkaloids, nitrogen compounds, and glucosinolates (GSLs). Several studies have shown that radish contains several secondary plant metabolites that can exert protective effects on chemically induced carcinogenesis in animals and tumor growth and formation in humans.”
“Among the health-promoting biomolecules mentioned before, GSLs stand out due to their antifungal, antibacterial, antioxidant, antimutagenic, hepatoprotective, nephroprotective, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, and antiproliferative activities.”
As valuable as radish roots are, studies are now finding that radish leaves have even greater nutritional value than the roots! The authors of the paper, ‘Nutritional and Phytochemical Characterization of Radish Leaves: A Comprehensive Overview’ write:
“Accumulating evidence suggests that radish leaves possess higher nutritional value compared to their roots… According to modern nutritional studies, radish leaves exhibit higher nutritional value than radish roots in several aspects. For instance, the vitamin C content in radish leaves exceeds that in radish roots by 2 times, while the levels of calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, riboflavin, and folic acid were found to be 3 to 10 times higher in radish leaves compared to radish roots.”
For all of these reasons, radishes are one of the few vegetables that have been grown in space! See the image of the study above. The authors explain the rational of growing radishes in space:
“The often-cited bland flavor of space food and the numerous health benefits of GSLs [glucosinolates] make Brassicales-based vegetables [radish] an important space crop food that are likely to provide spice to astronaut food, psychological benefits, gustatory appreciation, and also benefit the general public.”
Knowing the radish is an important ‘space crop’, is good reason to make room for them in your garden on earth!
In particular, growing radishes at home allows you to harvest the nutrient rich leaves, which aren’t always available with store-bought radishes, and even when they are — store-bought ones won’t be as fresh as your home-grown leaves.
And finally, don’t feel obliged to plant radishes in a row — rather, sow radish seeds in ’empty’ spaces in your garden and succession plant. As soon as spaces become available, plant radish seeds for a continuous harvest all summer.
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How to Grow Radishes? Easy to grow. Sow seeds outside just before the last frost date and then sow seeds every 2 weeks into summer for a continuous harvest. Radishes do best in cooler weather. Plant seeds 5mm (¼”), spacing seeds every 2”. Keep soil moist until seedlings emerge. Seeds usually germinate in 4-7 days.
