Radish loves you, yeah!

Today I (sort of) put crop covers over my raised garden bed and (hesitantly) pickled my little radishes!

Lately my little neighbors (slugs, mostly) have been eating my mint out of house and home, so I hope the mesh helps. I love that I can share my garden, but they’ve been a bit too ravenous lately.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted as a crop cover, so I bought some simple fine mesh and garden hoops. You get what you pay for, of course — I could already see the plastic hoops bending under the strain of curving them. I saw versu’s mama had really cute wire ones that went all along the sides, so I’ll ask her where she got them.

Immediately as I was setting up the cover, I realized I bought the wrong length of fine mesh, as well as no way to secure it on the garden bed.. so I will take photos of it later when the rest of the materials come in….

Mio quietly plotting how to explore the backyard, given any moment to escape.

I’m learning a lot about radishes 🫜. For a vegetable I don’t touch much beyond daikon (my favorite radish), I want to do my best to grow them the best that I can. They’re the seeds that Versu’s mama sowed just for me, so I have to give it my all!

One of the funniest things I learned is that people say they’re ready to harvest when you can see their “shoulders” peeking out of the soil. The imagery of radish shoulders was perfect, though, because I knew exactly what to look for!!

Another thing I learned is that size is dependent on a lot of factors: soil nutrition, light, temperature, and crowding. If you don’t give them room to grow, of course they can’t reach their potential, however full that may be.

Versu’s mama told me I could pick them up and rearrange them to give them more space, but I worry that it’s too late… By the time the leaves reach about 10”, any longer in the soil and they start tasting “woody”. So I decided to harvest the really tall ones and I’ll make a salad or sautéed with some olive oil and butter. I was reading that you treat them like collared greens or spinach, and I love spinach.

For the others that are still small and the leaves look healthy, I’ll continue growing them for another week and check again. I’m learning a lot about timing and patience, and I’m reminding myself it’s okay if I don’t get everything perfect the first time (something that’s so hard for me to be okay with!)

We have some new additions to the garden, ready to lend a helping hand.

Some prefer to take it easy, which is also perfectly okay with me!

Today’s harvest: they’re small and few, but they are mine.

To my enjoyment, Mio doesn’t seem to be afraid of water at all. He happily cuddles up next to me to watch me rinse the plants or wash the dishes, sometimes even licking the water off of my arm. Droplets of water even collect on his forehead, but he doesn’t care at all.

Since this is a small batch of radishes, and I really only eat radishes when they’re pickled or in soups, I decided to test out the former! I did equal amounts rice vinegar, sugar, and water with a pinch of salt.

I admit the pickling was a little stressful. Usually my mom is the one who prepares jars for canning, so I followed online tutorials. We’ve had a few encounters with exploding glass (double-walled tea cups, maybe not-so-oven-safe bakeware), so I was really nervous about boiling the jar. There’s also a lot of divisive opinions over the type of jar you use to can, like jars with rubber gaskets, so I’m kind of just hoping I sterilized everything properly. As much as I love cooking, I have to really thoroughly read and watch instructions to understand what I’m doing for the first time, which can be really poorly timed if I’m doing something in the moment. LOL

In any case, the radishes are in the jar, and now we wait!