Radish: planting, care and collection
Radish is a healthy vegetable. Not only root crops are eaten, but also leaves. It contains a huge amount of substances useful for the human body to maintain immunity. A properly grown radish will crunch and sprinkle with juice when cut, and the pulp will be without fibers and voids.
It can be an annual or biennial plant. Radishes are usually planted in late April or early May. It is best to sow the seeds in parts after ten to twenty days. Thus, the radish will be on the table all the time.
For good plant growth, daylight hours should be eight to ten hours. If the daylight hours last longer, then the plant begins to move to the breeding stage and stops growing. Therefore, in June, when daylight hours lasts about fourteen hours, sowing radishes is not desirable.
Thus, in the spring it is worth planting only early-maturing varieties. These varieties produce crops in about thirty days. Late varieties of radish will not be harvested earlier than in sixty days.
Radishes need moist and loose soil. Prepare the soil before planting. It needs to be dug up and fertilized with humus (fresh manure is contraindicated for radishes), at the rate of one bucket per square meter. For early maturing radish, the soil is prepared in the fall.
Before planting, the soil must be watered abundantly. Next, you need to make rows one centimeter deep. Sow the seeds one at a time. The distance between them will be about five centimeters.
Rows are recommended to be done at a distance of ten centimeters. After sowing, the rows are covered with soil and slightly crushed for faster germination.
Radish begins to sprout about on the fourth day, if the weather is optimal. In the month of April, sowing in the evenings can be covered with foil for faster germination.
Watering the radish is required every day. If the top layer of the earth dries up, the seedlings may die. Also, if the radish lacks moisture, then the fruits will taste bitter.
If the plant goes into the arrow and begins to bloom, this is a sign that it lacks moisture, in this case there will be no formation of root crops. If the radish is cracking, it is a sign that the moisture is not evenly distributed.
It is also regularly required to loosen the soil and remove weeds. Sometimes, for better nutrition, the soil with seeds is covered with mulch, peat or humus.
It makes sense after germination thin out radish... How do you know when it's time? The plant reaches a size of four to five centimeters. In this case, one plant is left for every five centimeters.
It is best to keep the distance between the seeds already during sowing, since when thinning radish the roots of neighboring radishes can be damaged.
Harvesting is simple: as soon as the radish becomes the optimal size, it is carefully pulled out by pulling the tops. It is not recommended to overexpose the radish in the ground, because it becomes hard on the outside, and loose on the inside (voids begin to form).
The approximate size in diameter when cut should be from two and a half to four centimeters. After the radish has been harvested, the tops of each root crop must be cut off.
You are now familiar with some of the specifics of planting, growing and harvesting radishes. Anyone can achieve a good harvest.