Radish Fail

...and success...it depends on how you look at it.

For whatever reason, I’m not having success growing radishes since we moved to this house.

I have theories… but I’m not sure what the issue really is.

This makes me sad because I look forward to eating the delightful Persian flavor combination of radishes, mint, feta and butter on pita like it’s an exotic find I couldn’t just drop by Pomegranate on Main to have any given weekend.

Essentially, they are bolting every spring before I get a chance to eat them. And then in the fall, it seems like I’m planting them too early and it’s still too hot for good germination.

But here’s where my theory breaks down:

Siena is successfully growing radishes in her garden¹ and she does absolutely nothing to tend it. It’s about 15 yards away from mine.

I’d say 8 out of 10 radishes we have eaten since we moved here we discovered in her garden, when she didn’t even remember planting them.

This leads to shrieks of delight, and lime-and-salt quick-pickled radishes for tacos.

And that is the big success that outweighs my failure:

My kids eating radishes like they are a rare treat.

This picture was Siena’s taco plate earlier this week when we found one such surprise radish late in the afternoon when tacos were already planned.

And that plate makes me happy.

I’m not a what-I-did-that-led-to-desirable-traits-in-my-kids-will-definitely-work-for-you kind of mom. Kids (and all people, for that matter) are too complex for that attitude.

So all I can say is my kids have spent every spring, summer and fall they can remember (and all the ones they can’t) getting to taste various leaves, flowers, roots, and fruits straight from the garden, and they like tasting new things.

Josiah once declared, “I don’t like vegetables” while chowing down on steamed edamame. And he still says he doesn’t like salad—but he picks and eats arugula straight from the ground, and I am feeling confident he will one day connect the dots to the green leaves on his plate.

1. My best tip for engaging kids in gardening is to give them their OWN space—a pot, a small section of your bigger garden, it can be anything—and not to really help them unless they ask. Let them see what happens when they experiment, when they forget to water, when they plant something too densely and don’t space things out.

My kids don’t do things “right” most of the time but they still end up harvesting flowers and food, and those lit up faces are priceless. They learn more by experience than when I give a lesson.