The Radish Adventure

My interest in growing radish was triggered after seeing the radishes grown by my close buddy, Roxanne last year. It took me awhile before I got this interest turned into a reality.


I bought a pack of radish seeds at CETDEM's Organic Fair for only RM1 per pack.

Using the same method used to germinate Adenium seeds that I read in the GCS Forum, I germinated my radish seeds with great success. Unfortunately I didn't take the photos for Step 1 & 2 below. I thought I would take the photo the following day but before I did so the seeds had already germinated! Amazing, how fast that happened!

1) I placed 7 seeds in a cup of water and leave them there till they sunk to the bottom of the cup. It can take a few hours or even overnight for it to happen.

2) Remove the seeds that had sunk to the bottom. I placed them on a damp kitchen paper and kept them in a covered tupperware. The kitchen paper MUST be kept damp. The tupperware was kept COVERED to ensure that the moisture was retained. Spray the kitchen towel with water whenever it was drying up.

Within 2 days of placing the seeds in the tupperware, all of them germinated!!

I tried the same steps for my Marigold & chilly seeds. Unfortunately, it didn't work on them. But the Radish seedlings continue to show progress. Within 3 days, the shoots have grown longer and tiny green leaves had appeared.

When there are 4 leaves on each of the seedling above, I transplanted them to a pot filled with soil. According to Rox, the soil must be loose to ease the growth of the radish. If the soil is hard and clayish, the radish may find it hard to grow and the result will be skinny radish that protrudes from the soil to the surface.

I placed the seedlings in a pot of soil medium that comprise of burnt soil, earthworm compost and some red soil. Within 10 days, these were what I got.

Here are my straggly-looking radishes. There are signs of leaf miner attacks on the leaves (see the white patterns). I hope they will grow well. I am checking on them daily with trepidation.

It reminded me that I am just like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of the River Cottage series shown on Asian Food Channel. I love watching the programme where he holds on to his ethos of self-sufficiency by cooking self-produced vegetables, self-hunted meats, self-catch fishes, self-grown fruits, self-produced liquor in his little cottage called River Cottage, with the help of his friends. As a smallholding farmer, Hugh would wait with trepidation everytime his livestock i.e. cow, pig, sheep or chicken were producing a calf or laying eggs. It's interesting to watch how his small River Cottage farm grows beyond and develop into the 42-acre huge farm (named River Cottage HQ) in his latest programme, "Beyond River Cottage". Catch the interesting River Cottage series if you can on Asian Food Channel. I bet you will find it as interesting as I do.

The radishes have grown taller, as seen in this shot taken today.