I planted a lot of radish seeds back in March, and then I just kept planting more and more. I harvested many of the resulting radish plants, but this year, I also left some and let them go to seed entirely so that I could see the whole process from start to finish. The results were not disappointing!
Radishes love cool weather, so they start to bolt and form flowers as soon as the temperatures get too hot (over 80 or so degrees). You might think it’s these flowers that produce the radish seeds… but unlike with so many other plants, that’s not the case with radishes. Radishes are part of the Brassica family, which forms seeds along the plant stems instead.
Radish seeds are circular and kind of a grayish light brown. Before you can harvest seeds from a plant, let the seed pod dry completely out. When I opened up some radish seed pods, there were around five to seven seeds inside, and each plant has produced at least 60 pods. That means, by a conservative estimate, each radish plant produces about 300 seeds. If that doesn't show you how motivated plants are to keep their species alive, I don’t know what will!
In the picture above, you can see how the plant has stopped sending its energy to the bulb once it starts to focus on seed production.
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Seed production is such a fascinating thing to watch in the garden. If you’re upset that a plant has unexpectedly bolted and is no longer sending energy to the part you want to eat, at least you can learn more about its life cycle and end up with some seeds for next year! The garden always gives you something, even if it’s not the thing you originally wanted. That’s it for deep life lessons from Nicole for today, my friends. I’m off to plant something!