Submitted by gisette on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 15:15
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Inspired by Peat's hydroponic carrots, though this isn't hydroponic, I planted radishes and spinach today. Basically, I have excess capacity under my new seed starting lights for the next month. 
Paying for the electricity, anyway, I want more food out of them. 
French breakfast radishes take 25 days. Baby leaf and Bloomsdale longstanding spinach take 30-45 days for a full head, but you can pick at it like looseleaf lettuce. Both are eminently munchable at the thinning stage, and prefer life cool. Neither can grow in an Aerogarden. They obviously don't need light to germinate (planting depth 1/2"), so for germination they're in the (relative 
) warmth of my office.
Don't have the perlite/vermiculite Peat used, and the spinach doesn't like hydroponics. The radish tub has a bottom single layer of hydroton rocks for drainage (because it has no holes), then regular chunky potting mix, with a layer of seed-starting mix on top. The deeper spinach pot is the same, minus the grow rocks, since its pot has drainage. Counter-intuitively, yes, the spinach needs a deeper pot. I've grown spinach seedlings before - they have an aggressive deep tap root. I don't know that this pot is deep enough for them to be truly happy, but I don't want to raise the lights too high, either.
Sun, 01/25/2009 - 17:17
#2
Heh. I'll be munching radishes in 2 weeks - the thinnings are just as good as the finished product. The tops are edible, too. Dunno how they taste...
I grew some nice spinach last spring. My growboxes were supposed to arrive in early April, so the spinach would have had a nice long season, but they got backordered. 
Waiting, my spinach seedlings got fair-sized. They're pretty easy, so long as you don't use hydroponics, and have something deep enough, and not warm. My summer / fall spinach didn't fare so well on the "not warm" part. But the garage should be nice and chilly til June. Fingers crossed, should be pretty easy.
Thu, 01/29/2009 - 20:40
#3
And half the radish sprouts are up now. 
That's pretty quick. Hefty seedlings. Spinach still thinking. Both pretty much as advertised on the packages - 4-6 days to germinate radish, 7-14 days for spinach.
Despite being a spring plant, radish germinates faster and more reliably at room temperature. Spinach is kinda odd. It germinates faster at room temps, but has a higher germination rate at 50° - more seeds survive.
Sat, 01/31/2009 - 14:16
#4
6 days: Most of the radishes have sprouted, but only 1 of the 4 spinach seeds. After the first couple radishes sprouted, I put them in the garage seed-light array for light, but the cold was slowing the germination of the remaining seeds. Brought the tub inside again yesterday, and within a couple hours, 4 more radishes appeared.
They're cute.
Sun, 02/01/2009 - 19:46
#5
And 3 of the 4 spinach are up. No further radishes have appeared. Both pots out in the cool garage now for growing.
Fri, 02/06/2009 - 20:46
#6
12 days: I couldn't resist anymore, and thinned one radish to see what it looked like under there. Not very big. 
Tasty, though, and the guinea pig really liked the top.
That's the problem with these ripen-underground crops. So hard to peek.
Sun, 02/08/2009 - 16:21
#7
13-14 days: more complete thinning. No bulb to them yet, but very tasty little radishes. The spinach is getting nowhere in any particular hurry. Yesterday the February thaw arrived, but that was preceded by bitter cold (single digits). I brought my seedlings in a few times to warm up during the lights' dark cycle. They're definitely not growing as fast as they would at "normal spring" temperatures (~65). Spring doesn't actually do a great deal of that around here. The garage is doing a fair job of mimicking CT shoreline spring temperatures, but the ocean-bathtub effect tends to grant us balmy autumns and cold clammy springs.
Sun, 02/08/2009 - 16:33
#8
Shame about the spinach growing slowly.
The radishes are looking good, another 11 days to harvest?
Sun, 02/08/2009 - 16:39
#9
They look behind that, to me. Maybe after I get my new seedling heat mat under them, they'll take off...
Sat, 02/14/2009 - 14:08
#10
20 days: Well, I don't think the radishes will be ready in 25 days, but they're coming along. Spinach also a little slow. But they do seem to be picking up the pace with warmer weather and a seedling heat mat. And today's test baby radish was tasty, if not plump.
Sun, 02/15/2009 - 17:00
#11
Hmph. My radishes are splitting. Maybe the soil didn't stay evenly moist enough? It never got dry... Oh, well. They'll probably eat the same, split or no, but perhaps they really will be done in 25 days.
Mon, 02/16/2009 - 16:14
#12
That's annoying, I will be pulling my carrots tomorrow - I hope they are turn out OK...
Mon, 02/16/2009 - 18:44
#13
They don't seem to be close relatives. I don't even think the radish part is the root - seems more like the stem. Will you be pulling a few carrots and then deciding re the others?
Tue, 02/17/2009 - 05:33
#14
I pulled the lot up, a whole bunch of tiddlers! 
Wed, 02/18/2009 - 12:12
#15
It finally dawned on me last night that my spinach and baby coleuses under the seedling lights, were too yellow, and that was probably a nitrogren deficiency. I'd been watering them with weak Flora lettuce nute formula, which I'd have thought had everything they needed, but... I tried Miracle Gro on them last night. Figured it would take a few days to see if it worked, but no.
They were visibly greener in less than an hour.
So, no more feeding hydroponic nutes to seedlings growing in seedling mix.
Many of the other seedlings, including the radishes, it doesn't matter, because I planted them in a layer of seedling mix over a depth of Moisture Control Miracle Gro potting mix - so they already had that built in.
The spinach should grow faster now.
Wed, 02/18/2009 - 17:23
#16
I couldn't resist - seeing Pete's carrots made me want to eat some radishes. 
Pulled up 3, though their 25 days isn't up until tomorrow. Small, but hot and tender. The stem splitting business didn't seem to do any real harm - like it's already peeled. I imagine they'll be fatter by weekend!
I like this plant - fast, unfussy, forgiving of mistakes. Rematch! Planted 4 more seeds on the cropped side of the tub, and still have 5 more growing from the first planting.
Wed, 02/18/2009 - 17:43
#17
Nicely grown, perhaps I should have stuck to these instead of carrots - which should be eatable by December. 
Radishes are a great little crop to grow, so fast.
Wed, 02/18/2009 - 19:58
#18
Do you like radishes? I don't much enjoy carrots, and do like radishes.
I'd always thought they were more similar, but then up popped the familiar brassica seed leaves. That is one strange plant family!
If it makes you feel any better, carrots are biennial - they intend to live for two years. 
I read as a kid that the Queen Anne's Lace flowers are actually 2nd year feral carrots. Despite years of intending to try pulling them up to eat the year before they flower, it escapes my attention span. 
Radishes are more my speed...
Thu, 02/19/2009 - 03:19
#19
I like radishes, particularly sliced up in a mixed salad. I grew radishes the same way as carrots some time ago, thought I would try the same method with the carrots - it should have worked.
After doing some further research, it said that you should not feed them; "it encourages greenery at the expense of carrot growth". Well, I got plenty of that, so, only water from now on...
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 12:57
#20
27 days: Pulled up the rest of the radishes - delish! They didn't grow particularly much in the past 3 days. The ones who sprouted way late, never did amount to much. The spinach is greener and growing slightly faster, between the more-nitrogen-nutes and the heat mat. Still kinda behind for its age, but it really hasn't been warm. I'm thinking "cool weather crop" means it wants a nice long period of 60° weather, and 50° isn't good enough. Tough. The Korean red curl outrider, nicely red, also isn't growing very fast. That lettuce variety seems happier in the 70's.
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 14:05
#21
Your making me hungry now, they look good; I have no carrots and no cukes to end the grumbling stomach at the moment!
I need something quick to grow, and the radishes you have produced are probably one of the quickest things. Hmm, tempted to pot up some radishes in perlite/vermiculite again.
Sat, 02/21/2009 - 14:33
#22
Go for it. They were satisfying and quick, and didn't take much room...
Sat, 02/28/2009 - 14:41
#23
5 weeks: Spinach starting to look pretty good. I may eat one of the two plants and let the other continue with more space. These plants are supposed to take 45 days to harvest, and they're close enough.
I added 4 replacement radish seeds last week, and so far only 2 of them have come up. Oh, well. The seedling shelf will soon become much more crowded...
Sat, 02/28/2009 - 14:51
#24
The spinach came good in the end, I've never tried propagating this. It's a shame it won't grow well in the AeroGarden, it would have been great if it grew like the lettuce.
Sat, 02/28/2009 - 15:02
#25
Popular idea. Many have failed, including me.
So far what spinach seemed to like best is Miracle Gro moisture-control potting mix with fresh time-release nutes. That's the first thing I tried to grow it with, which may have skewed my expectations. The seedlings I'm growing now for outdoors are in seedling mix, watered with dilute Miracle Gro, and they seem happy enough.
Sat, 03/07/2009 - 20:37
#26
6 weeks: Decided the spinach looked crowded with 2 in the little pot, so ate one. It was good. Our guinea pig was most impressed. I think the remaining plant is bloomsdale longstanding spinach. Still not quite to its 45 day point, but it looks behind schedule. Still having trouble getting its leaves to stay green instead of yellow, and that definitely slows it down.
Radish plantings 2 and 3 are coming along... Really uneven germination. Like 4 from the 3rd wave had sprouted before the most recent of the 2nd wave (1.5 weeks younger). Oh well. No fat stems yet.
Sat, 03/14/2009 - 15:18
#27
7 weeks: The remaining spinach should be harvestable now, but I think it can grow a little bigger... No fattening radishes yet, though the older ones are 24 days. Well, whenever... Though I may just go ahead and eat the spinach whenever I'm hungry for it - the plant is not exciting. Did add some lime to it and one of the spinach seedlings this week. Visibly faster growth on the test seedling.
Sat, 03/21/2009 - 21:59
#28
8 weeks: The guinea pig and I have been munching on the spinach, which seems to have inspired it to grow more. It's also been outside a bit on warmer days (45-55°F ). Whenever I need its space or pot, or just get hungry for spinach, it's done. The radishes are plumping up. I could harvest a couple now, but I want to see how fat they get.
Sun, 03/22/2009 - 02:19
#29
Nice radishes, that's how I would have liked mine to have turned out. Now you're just rubbing it in "I could harvest a couple now, but I want to see how fat they get". 
Sun, 03/22/2009 - 10:14
#30
< rub, rub > How are yours doing with their more-light? Fattening at all yet?
You will be tucking into those radishes before my carrots have come up!
I'm interested in the spinach as I've never tried this, look forward to this one.