Just. NOTES // Radishes
The first sunny day of school gardening for about six months brought joy in the shape of sowing, planting, drawing wildflowers and edibles, and handing a harvest of 'French Breakfast' to the cooks.
I don’t know about you but my memory of school dinners was my infant experience of warm milk, liver and onions (I still remember the smell), and the slimmest square of chocolate cake, followed by a more formal weekly menu in my primary years – a tureen of ‘cheese slop’ (actually quite a tasty soufleé) with roast potatoes and pickled beetroot setting the tone for each and every Wednesday between the ages of 7 and 10. We also had to eat everything on our plates so I inadvertently stuffed whatever I didn’t like into the pockets of my pinafore, including mashed potato, peas (which I refused to eat until I was about 18!) and baked beans. Apologies mum for most probably making your laundry cycle even more laboursome.
It was therefore an absolute joy to hand over our first crop of radish ‘French Breakfast’ to the kitchen of the school where I teach gardening and nature every Tuesday. The joy of plot to plate, but also joy in the knowledge that the kids will be eating a seasonal and varied diet of fruit, vegetables, salad, and herbs that, in addition, they have grown themselves.
We grew our radishes from seed, we drew them and observed, and then we pulled them out and marvelled at how full and richly coloured and sumptuous our creations were. Well nature’s creations, but we had a hand, and between us our radishes went from the blue-green, two-lobed first leaves (important for distinguishing between these and the ever-present ‘Godwin weed’ also known as Stella melaria or chickweed) to more thuggish and serrated mature leaves, to an increasingly glimpse of what lay below – swollen taproots in the most perfect shade of crimson pushing up to signal their readiness.
I just happened to have a packet of ‘French Breakfast’ radishes to hand when we starting sowing our edible crops, free on the front of a magazine I think, and would heartily recommend them for their vigorous, fast-maturing habit and elongated oval shape capped off with an attractive white tip. We started the seeds off in an old window box of peat-free multi-purpose compost, placed in the greenhouse, mainly to avoid the non-stop rain and wind. They germinated really quickly and seedlings went into the ground outside after two weeks, spread out at generous intervals so the foliage could expand with ease and we could sow the next successive batch in between. One more week and they were good to go.
Can’t wait to furnish the school kitchen and lunchtime salad bar with more edibles. Cut and come again lettuce coming soon.