Torah gives clear instructions regarding harvest. Well, long before I knew what I was doing was called homesteading, I did realize I would never be able to afford to have the USDA in my back pocket, so I looked for heirloom seeds. Even without GMOs, the hybrid plants often do not reproduce, or throw back to a recessive gene, so the old fashioned seeds were what I wanted. The concept of GMO gave me the vivid image of eating vegetables that have their own digestive system . . . Which did not seem appealing; as I love my veggies. In seeing the increase of heirloom seed companies, I'd say several people share my view.
So, in this whole seed harvesting deal, I had to learn how to do that. Some seeds are easy to obtain from the produce itself while others, the entire plant has to be allowed to "go to seed." There are even a few that I'm going to have raise for a full year, or let them freeze or something. I'm still learning, always got something new to learn. It was in attempting to harvest seeds, that I learned of the amazing extras.
I love radishes, they are simply delicious. I like them raw, plain, in a sandwich, steamed. I just really like them. So in learning about harvesting their seeds, I made the most awesome discovery. First you can't pull every radish, because the seeds are not in the produce itself. So, some must be left to go to seed, which means the tops get pretty tall, the leaves get really large, and pretty little flowers develop, as pictured.
Most of these little blossoms will develop into a pod that contains seeds. Now the extra blessing is one plant will produce enough seeds for a few rows of radishes. I didn't know that the first year, so I let probably 10 to 12 radish plants continue to grow. When I saw how many hundreds of pods there were on them, I realized I wouldn't need all those seeds, and the pods were pretty and green and looked similar to sugar snap peas. My granddaughters were in the garden with me and we figured why not try one? They were delicious. They tasted like sugar snap peas with just a bit of a mild radish flavor. They were good to eat as they were, delicious in salads, and I even use them in stir fry. I've frozen them and included them when canning "hot veggies."
Radish pods have become a mainstay vegetable here at Goshen, as well as the radishes.
For seed harvest, the pods must be dried, then the seeds can be planted next year. I plant the entire dried pod and they've done very well, but some folks split the pods and get all the seeds out. Either way works!
I would have never discovered radish pods, had I not realized harvesting seeds was part of the bigger plan!
Here is one of my cabbage plants just started from a seed in the garden, early in March. This is the first year I've tried this. I usually start them in the green house and get them bedding size, but I just sowed the seeds straight into the garden soil. With our late winter this year, I didn't plant as soon as I usually do, but things are coming along nicely!
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and G-d saw that it was good.
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