The Urban Patch

I did not have “discover an entirely new vegetable in my own garden” on my bingo card for this week.

I’d let a few of my radishes bolt – they’d gone to flower weeks ago and I’d been meaning to pull them out but kept getting distracted by, well, everything else. And then the other day I actually looked at them properly, and noticed that instead of flowers, the stems were now covered in these plump, pale green pods.

I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at.

A quick Google later and – radish pods! Also called rat-tail radishes, which is a deeply unappealing name for something that turns out to be genuinely delicious. When radishes go to seed, the pods that form are entirely edible – crisp, mildly peppery, and with that unmistakeable radish bite but somehow lighter and fresher than the root itself.

I’ve picked a big handful and they’re sitting on the kitchen bench right now waiting to be cooked up. I’m thinking a quick stir-fry, or maybe just raw in a salad with some sesame dressing. Either way, I’m unreasonably excited about it 🤓.

This Is Why I Love Gardening

Here’s the thing that gets me every time: the supermarket has taught me that a radish is a small red root vegetable that goes in salads. Full stop. That’s it. That’s the whole radish, apparently.

But the radish has an entire life beyond that little red ball. It flowers (beautifully, actually – delicate white and pink / purple blooms that the bees absolutely love). It has nutritious leaves. It produces pods. It goes to seed. There’s a whole second, third and fourth acts that the supermarket just quietly ignores out because it doesn’t fit neatly in a plastic bag.

It’s one of my favourite things about growing your own. You stop seeing vegetables as products and start seeing them as plants – with full, interesting lives and more to offer than you ever expected.

The radish pods are just the latest reminder of that.

Happy growing 🌱