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  • From: Richard Moyer <ramoyer AT gmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Forage Radishes
  • Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:39:56 -0500

Marlin,
This is our third year of growing forage radishes/daikons, and they stick up above the ground in a variety of our soils.  As a value-added cover crop, we protect a portion of them with row cover, then enjoy eating/selling them all winter.  The covered ones bloom early spring, good for our bees and other beneficials.  We sell the flowers, then the seedpods.  Easy to collect seed for future use.  We let a portion of this seed fall to the ground.  It came up randomly in the fall in our spinach/mustard/lettuce beds, and the random, widely-spaced radishes are doing a good job holding the row cover up off the greens on the coldest nights.  These radish greens are also good in salad (small leaves) and as a cooked green.  So for us, it's a value-added cover crop, fall, winter and spring.

As for most effective breakup of hardpan, I talked with someone at tillageradish.com, and they described research trialing 29? seed sources of these radishes, to find the ones that made a single deep root, instead of ones that tend to branch out when they hit resistance.

We've noticed that the edible daikon radish seed gave us straighter, deeper roots, whereas the forage radish seed from one source tended to branch out more, therefore wide instead of deep.

I've not bought from them before, am considering doing so this year, but tillageradish says their seed is selected for going straight and deep.  So I'll be comparing 2-3 seed sources this year, to see which ones consistently go the deepest.

So if your goal is to break up hardpan as thoroughly and deeply as possible, all daikon/forage radish seed is not equal.

Dr. Ray Weil at U. of Maryland has done much to research and demonstrate this multi-use cover crop.  Go here for a summary of ongoing projects:  http://www.agnr.umd.edu/Academics/departments/ENST/labs/Radish/index.cfm
and see this link for info specific to the radishes.
http://www.hgic.umd.edu/content/documents/FS824ForageRadish_NewMultipurposecovercrop.pdf 

Richard Moyer
SW VA




  • Re: [Market-farming] Forage Radishes, Richard Moyer, 01/14/2012

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