Planting radish in open ground: preparation and planting scheme

Preparing for planting

Radish seeds are very similar to radish seeds – they are also quite large and brown. When buying, you should pay attention to their color: rich brown indicates freshness, but gray discolored seeds have clearly been stored for a long time, it’s not worth risking sowing them, they most likely have below-normal germination.

Usually the seeds are calibrated before sowing. You can plant any seeds, but a large root crop will grow from large ones, and who, growing vegetables, wants to reap a deliberately bad harvest? That is why the seeds are poured with salt water, and then filtered through a sieve with two-millimeter cells. Those seeds that remain in the sieve are soaked a day before sowing in a solution of pale potassium permanganate to disinfect.

Some gardeners say that it is possible to soak the seeds in a fertilizer solution before sowing, but what is better and whether it is worth doing this can only be learned in practice. To the question of how to properly prepare the seed, everyone answers based on their experience. But even if you do nothing with the seeds, lay them dry in the ground, then, probably, not all will sprout, but the roots will grow in everyone that sprouts. There is already a question about the size and taste of the resulting crop. Since gardeners want to get a rich harvest of tasty and healthy radishes, they begin to work on this from seed.

Good and bad predecessors

Radish is unpretentious, it can be grown on any land. But those who want to get a good harvest should plant it in an open area, where it will receive maximum sunlight and heat. The soil should be neutral, loamy (or sandy) with a high content of humus, with regular moisture.

You can sow radish where peas, beans, soybeans, lentils, beans, peanuts used to grow – legumes are considered good predecessors for all types of radish. It will grow well after cucumbers, squash, zucchini, pumpkins, eggplant, corn, peppers, onions and dill. But the bad predecessors are its cabbage (or cruciferous in other terminology) relatives: horseradish, carrots, beets. After them, radishes can be planted only after 4 years.

Landing scheme

Radish grows well, planted along the edges (borders) of beds with tomatoes, potatoes, onions or cucumbers. If she is given her own separate plot, then they are usually sown in rows. The most convenient radish planting scheme is nests and rows.

This means that on the prepared bed, you need to make grooves 2 cm deep, and leave 30–35 cm between them. 3 seeds are placed in each groove in the nest every 8–10 cm, this is for early and early ripening varieties. When they want to save a radish for the winter, late varieties are planted at a distance of 15 cm between the nests. About a week after germination, one of the strongest sprouts is left in each nest, and the rest are simply removed.

On this occasion, there is another opinion. Some gardeners prefer to plant radish not in nests of several things, but one seed at a time. Breaking through the shoots, we disturb all the sprouts, and not just those that we remove, the remaining sprout for this reason slows down in growth and development. This can be taken into account, but then you need to be prepared for the fact that there will be too large gaps in the row due to the fact that not all seeds will sprout. Although, radish can be sown later. It can be sown from the second half of March, it is then that it is recommended to sow early small-fruited varieties. Early maturing varieties are sown from April 25 to early May, winter black round radish is sown from late June to early July, and the latest varieties are sown in July.

Watering radish

After laying the seeds in the ground, the grooves are covered, rammed so that the soil fits snugly against them from all sides, and then moistened. Radish should always grow in moist soil, moreover, watering should be regular.

Usually, early radishes are watered weekly, and late ones, which are going to be stored for the winter, are watered less often, only 4 or 5 times per season.

With insufficient watering, the root crop becomes too hard and tasteless, it practically loses its edibility. If you allow the soil to dry out, and then water it, then the root crop will certainly crack. Uneven watering or lack of moisture can lead to the fact that a two-year-old vegetable, which in the first year of life should grow a root crop, and bloom and bear fruit in the second year, can immediately release an arrow, practically without forming a root crop. So the uniformity of watering is very important when growing this vegetable.

Mulch will help retain moisture in the soil, so seedlings are mulched with compost, peat or straw. Mulch will keep weeds from growing, which means you will have to weed much less often.

fertilizers

Delicious large radish will grow on fertile, humus-rich soil. When preparing the beds for digging, compost or humus and complex mineral fertilizers are usually added, and wood ash is necessarily added. It is very convenient if the soil was well fertilized for the predecessor crop, then when digging a plot in the fall, you can limit yourself to a minimum of fertilizers. You should never bring unrotted manure under the radish, from such a fertilizer the root crop will begin to branch.

Since the ripening period for early and early ripening varieties is very short, they are fed with nitrogen fertilizers, usually lime-ammonium or sodium nitrate is used. The first time top dressing is made after the appearance of the second leaf, and the second time – after a week. Late varieties (if there is such a need) are fed weekly, stop doing this 3 weeks before harvest. As a rule, the full complex of mineral fertilizers is alternated with nitrogen fertilizers, since the need for nitrogen is large.

Video “Sowing radish”

This video is about the timing of planting and the technology of sowing radish using a very convenient device.