Radish Harvest!.... (Not quite)

Yesterday was the 30 day mark for our French Breakfast radishes. (Top front row, right hand side.) They're a little behind schedule... but not by much. 23 days after planting we were thinning the crop and enjoying the sprouts in dinner salads; so we've discovered that planting radishes has a two-fold harvest! :) I'm not too bothered by the delay in maturation, this is the beginning of spring after all... planting this variety again in mid-summer will be interesting study.

The peas directly behind this crop of radishes are the faster 55 day Sugar Sugar snap peas. We'll have to put up the lattice for those reasonably soon. I think that we may be able to get one more planting in front of these snap peas - but it will have to be something with a fast maturation. Once the snap peas get bigger, the space in front of them will be overwhelmed and will have to be left alone for the rest of the season.

A second crop of radishes, "White Icicle Heirloom" was just planted in front of the 90 day Sugar Star snap peas. These are super fast- just 23 days. (!!) I'm trying to get better about off-setting the plantings so we have continual harvests, so I only used half the pack. At the same time, this is the first planting where I was really trying to be mindful of seed dispersion and spacing so as not to waste seeds. (This was a bit tricky for assistant Cyrus, who was not particularly mindful as to how the seeds landed...)

I've been researching succession planting- which is different techniques for maximizing the space you use. Thanks to the calendar, I'm able to quickly see what has been planted when- so that makes planting in timed intervals much easier. Another succession planting technique is re-seeding a space immediately after harvesting a crop. (A cold season/warm season planting) This will take more research to make sure the vegetables that get planted are complementary in terms of soil management. There's also inter-cropping, which involves two or more plantings in the same space at the same time that complement each other. The Three Sister's technique, developed by the Iroquois is an example of this. I'd really like to try this if I can get the new terraced garden done by the beginning of June.