Radish Varieties: What You Need to Know Before You Plant

August 30, 2017 Author: Ann Clary Organic Gardening: Vegetables / The Mighty Garden Archive

An array of radish varieties are suitable for growing in many areas of California from the time weather cools in fall until winter. Cherry Belle is a popular moderately spicy variety that is tolerant of difficult soils and is also somewhat heat tolerant, while Champion, Crimson Giant, and Early Scarlet Globe are milder. Easter Egg radish, commonly sold in seed packets, is not a variety, but a collection of varieties in different colors, which can be an easy way to produce a successive or slightly staggered harvest from one seed packet or if you have time to seed only once.

French Breakfast and Icicle are more heat tolerant than other radish varieties, and can be planted slightly earlier in fall and later in winter in your zone, but they will still become overly spicy or tough if you wait too long to harvest. If you want to experiment with radishes in weather too warm for radishes to produce good-quality roots, you may wish to grow the heirloom Rat’s Tail radish variety for its edible seedpods.

Daikon radish varieties such as Miyashige or Tokinashi (All Season) are biennial and typically mild-flavored with long carrot-like roots and fast-growing leaves that are often used in stir-frying. They need a longer growing season, usually 50 to 70 days, as opposed to 20 to 35 days for most smaller globe-type radish varieties.

Finally, how can any gardener’s life be complete without growing an odd radish variety now and then like the spicy Round Black Spanish, or mild Sakurajima Daikon, which commonly produces roots of 10 to 20 pounds each, and purportedly produces single roots as large as 50 to 100 pounds.