May92022

by Learning Lead – Elisabeth Huang

To be honest, not every food scrap that I initially planned to regrow sprung back to life. One of the food scraps that I was hoping to regrow was radishes. I absolutely love cutting slices of radishes and submerging them into apple cider and then having them as a snack the next day. Hence, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be awesome if I was able to regrow one of my all-time favourite snacks to enjoy during the summer?

With that thought in mind, I quickly began to browse the Internet. From the various sites that I went on, I couldn’t help but felt joy in my heart when I learned that radishes were one of the foods you can regrow from food scraps.

Without wasting little time, I placed some soil in a container with a few holes in it that can serve as drainage holes and then cut off the bottom of the radish where the root was and placed it in the soil.

However, after looking at another site, it turns out that another method to regrow it was to use toothpicks to suspend the top part of the radish with leaves in the air but the remaining part in water (without completely submerging it) of a glass of water. I already cut off quite a bit of the leafy part from the top part of the radish since I didn’t think the top part was needed but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try to plant it in the soil?

I was wrong, If I decided to go with the second method, I should have taken the time to suspend the top part of the radish in the air with most of it in water and waited until there were roots before planting it in the soil. Given that I did not do this, there was no radish.

After a bit of time, I wasn’t too sure where the food scrap that I began with even went. Being the hopeful optimist that I was, I thought that a small leafy plant coming out of the soil from the same container that I have placed the radish scrap in may be a sign that the radish may have magically grown. However, as the little plant grew more, I was able to analyze it better and concluded that it was just a weed.

Although I wasn’t successful in growing radishes, here are some lessons I learned from this experience:

  • I should have done more research before attempting to regrow radishes from food scraps especially since there is so much information on the world wide web on this topic!
  • Instead of putting the radish scrap in the soil of a container, I should have probably planted the radish scrap directly into the ground after a while or used a container that had a greater height to provide more room for the radish to grow.
  • As I delve further into my search to learn more about regrowing radish from scraps, I learned that there are many types of radishes out there! As a result, there may be different considerations to take into account when growing Daikon radishes versus Cherry Belle radishes.
  • I came across one site where the individual mentioned that they had to try a few times before being able to grow radishes. As a result, from the lessons learned from the various growers, I would be interested in trying different tips and different ways to regrow radishes since there is more than one way to do so and many types of radishes!

I also came across several sites that generously share various tips on how to regrow radish from food scraps (some of the sites outline one method of regrowing radishes while other sites highlight more than one method of regrowing radishes):

From the sites above, I’ve compiled a few tips to help anyone who may be interested in getting started in regrowing their own radishes from food scraps in the spring or fall:

  •  Although radish needs a minimum of 8 hours of sunlight a day, radish needs shades on hot sunny days.
  • The growth of the roots of the radish can slow down in dry soil whereby slow-growing radish will give off an unpleasant flavour. However, it is also important not to overwater your radish. Try to keep the soil well-drained.
  • Radish will mature between 50 and 70 days. Once they mature, harvest them before they start splitting.
  • Leave radish enough space to grow – provide at least 2 inches of space between each radish to grow.
  • Remove the weeds in the area often to allow for the roots of the radish to grow.

With spring approaching, I am excited to try growing radish scraps from the wisdom that these online growers have shared! If all works great, then I look forward to sharing one of my all-time favourite radish snacks submerged in apple cider with others 😊

Category: Cautious Optimist