These should be sown as soon as the ground can be worked in the spring,
and successive sowings should be made every two or three weeks, as
recommended with peas, lettuce, etc. Do not sow too many at one time,
but sow frequently, that they may be had fresh and crisp; they soon
become either hollow, or hard and woody, if allowed to stand long after
they are of sufficient size for use. Where there is glass enough to
spare, it is an excellent plan to sow two or three rows in the hotbed
at each planting of seeds, which will furnish them for use several
weeks before they can be had from the garden.
There is a general impression that radishes do not do well except in
very light soil, while my experience is that it is mainly a matter of
manure and cultivation, and that good radishes can be raised early in
the season on the heaviest of soils, though later in the season they
will not succeed unless the soil be favorable. Where “Night Soil” can
be obtained and composted with ashes, it will make the finest kind of
manure for the radish bed; but it should be applied with judgment,
as it will burn up any crop if applied too heavily. This manure can
hardly be so readily applied in a special location in the garden
worked by horse power, and I strongly disapprove of making “beds” in
such a garden; it should be kept as level as possible, that all the
cultivation may be done with the wheel and horse hoes; while “beds”
mean lots of slow hand work, and hard beaten ground in the paths and
edges, that are perpetual sources of weeds; while in the level garden
the location of rows and crops can be continually shifted, every
portion of the ground being used, and none escaping cultivation.
For the earliest plantings, the small, very early kinds should be used,
and these will grow the finest radishes of the season, fresh, crisp,
and slightly pungent. For summer use, the large summer kinds, of very
mild flavor, should be selected. These latter should be planted from
the first of June until the first of August, after which I begin to
sow the small early kinds again, having found that I can grow them as
fine and palatable as in the spring. In sowing these in the kitchen
garden I sow a part of a row at a time, in the portion worked with
the wheel hoe, where the rows are about one foot apart; the seed is
sown thinly in the drills, and if it comes up too thickly, should
be thinned out to one inch apart for the small kinds and two inches
for the larger ones. The seed should be sown from one-half inch to
one inch in depth, according as it is early or late in the season or
in heavy or light soils. The radishes should be pulled early in the
morning and kept in fresh water in a cool cellar until used, so as to
have them fresh, brittle and crisp. The large winter varieties are
not much raised, except by the Germans, being rather too pungent for
the American taste.[12] The seed is generally mixed with the turnip
seed and broad-casted or drilled in together, but if I were planting
them, I would think it much better to sow them in drills and cultivate
separately.