Kitchen garden delights - Radish

If you are looking for a vegetable to grow in your kitchen garden and you, like me, are the sort of person who is impatient to see the results, what do you start with? We were on our regular visit to Madiwala market for vegetable shopping when we saw the well-known face of the lady selling seeds and seedlings. I asked her which was the fastest growing vegetable she had, and she immediately fished out a packet of radish seeds.


We bought the seeds packet for Rs.10 and planted 6 of them in a pot. I made sure the soil was loose without any hard rocks which might hamper the roots from growing or disfigure the roots. 4 out of the 6 seeds germinated within 3-4 days of planting.


Every day in the next one month brought with it a noticeable growth in the foliage of the radish plants. And soon we could see the white root below the leaves at surface of the soil. After around 5-6 weeks of planting, we could see the root emerging up from the soil and pushing itself outwards to see the sunlight. Judging by the circumference of the root, we decided to wait for a few more days, By the 8th week, we decided it was time to harvest the radish.


Harvesting radish doesn't necessarily require a shovel or a knife. We just loosened the soil around the root and pulled it by hand.


The leaves became Radish Leaves Chutney and the radishes were used for Arachchu Vitta Sambhar by amma.

Not a recipe this time - Its about my garden

To have a garden in our balcony was a very old decision by me and G. We have had plants in pots right from the day we moved into our apartment and over the years, we have seen plants grow, flourish and die, some due to neglect and some because their season ended. Though none of our original plants are with us any more, we have continuously replenished our garden with new plants every season.
Each plant brings a lot of memories to mind and reminds us of how we have grown too. I have gone through seasons when I have struggled with a particular plant, only to sow it again the next season to see it grow effortlessly. Sometimes the plants that flourished the first time, failed to do so in subsequent trials.
In the next few blog entries, I intend to write about my plants and the story behind them. Although it seems like a misfit in a blog page dedicated for recipes, I was lazy to start a new blog page for gardening and hence clubbing it here.
For ease of filtering I will tag all these entries with the label "gardening".
So here starts my green saga.....