Circle ’round, friends, for today we celebrate the spice of seasonality with the start of radish season. Yes, it’s a little late. No, today wasn’t the first 2025 harvest of our French Breakfast Radishes (Raphanus sativus). Heck, it’s 81° right now, more mid July than mid June. Needless to say, not the sort of day we usually associate with a spring garden staple. But it’s radish season at last, and if it’s as big a success as our just passed asparagus season, I’ll be as grateful.
To celebrate this spicy taste of spring I invite you to join me on an eye- and palette-pleasing retrospective of radish seasons past. Although it’s nowhere near year-to-year in scope, it offers a glimpse into the anticipations and joy these slender red and white vegetables bring to me.
Let’s start back on April 29, 2011 when I lamented the late start to our radish season, seed planting having repeatedly been postponed because of rain. (Yes, the same rain that resulted in Lake Champlain’s 2011 flooding!)
Although we have our work cut out for us when Lake Champlain water levels drop, another short-term challenge is the super saturated soil… Last year, I planted spinach and French Breakfast Radishes in the garden in mid-March, and my bride and I had been gorging on succulent baby spinach for weeks by this point. Not so this year… (Source: Planting delayed due to soggy soil)
A little over one month later, on June 9, 2011, I rejoiced when seeds were nestled into soil, awakening and soon (hopefully), germinating.
Onions, radishes, peas and Swiss chard are already underway! (Source: Rosslyn Gardens: Heirloom Tomatoes and More)
Tick, tock, tick, tock,… You can hear the clock advancing as I anticipate radish season. And then, I failed to post. Perhaps I was too excited to type out a message. In any event, on November 18, 2011 I returned to my still fresh feelings for the white and root vegetables anecdotally, as if planting radishes symbolically encapsulates the whole of vegetable gardening.
I plant French Breakfast Radishes and bush beans in the compost-enriched garden and several unlikely seedlings emerge among the radish and bean sprouts. I skip them while weeding, and soon enough I am rewarded with yellow cherry tomatoes, wart covered gourds, and a curly garlic scape! (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Now let’s fast forward to July 15, 2012 as radish season was winding down.
The good news is that we’ve been devouring radishes (see French Breakfast Radish) and greens for over a month. Already finished with the first radish and lettuce patches and making good headway through the second patches. Will plant more lettuce this week along with beans and another squash crop. No more radishes. I think I’ve already hit my limit. (Source: Rosslyn Gardens: Mid-July Veggies)
A bit like asparagus season and tomato season, I tend to overdo it. Radishes. Every. Day. Delicious for days. Weeks. But after a month or so, I’m ready for a break.
And then a year later I’m eager to start all over again. On May 27, 2013 I included germinating radishes in a joyful overspilling of bountiful blessings. Such good fortune. Such early season abundance.
The sky is blue. The sun is warm. Robins are plucking worms from the soggy lawn. The purple lilacs are blooming. Spinach, radishes (French Breakfast Radish… Yum!), arugula and lettuce are reaching toward the sunny heavens. And Lake Champlain is wavy but not choppy. A postcard perfect day. (Source: Lake Champlain is Rising, Rising, Rising)
Sometimes my mention of radish season is a convenient way of contextualizing a description like this July 29, 2015 mention.
As you wander along past two varieties of beets interspersed with a fresh crop of French Breakfast Radishes your eyes would suddenly, inevitably notice a coiled rattlesnake in the middle of the Swiss chard! (Source: Snakes, Swiss Chard & Automobiles)
Boo! Spring into summer fun. Ever the prankster.
Mostly my mentions of radish season are celebratory like this June 7, 2016 update (finally published out of sync by a week or so from the day it was initiated).
On this technicolor Tuesday I present to you one of our flashiest May garden treats, French Breakfast Radishes.
Field and forrest foraged veggies — like stinging nettles, wild ramps, and fiddleheads — are nature’s charitable reminder that winter has once again yielded to spring. Then our vegetable gardens begin to awaken with asparagus and spinach that spoil our palates with succulent, vitamin packed hints of warmer days.
Radishes (my favorite are French Breakfast Radishes) celebrate precocious summer’s spicy return with vibrant, bye-bye-mud-season colors, a super satisfying crunch, and tastebud reviving explosions of peppery sweetness. (Source: Radishes and Radish Greens)
Foraged nettles, wild ramps, and fiddleheads followed by cultivated asparagus, spinach, and radishes. Spring has sprung! I returned to this bellweather edibles on June 6, 2023, this time remembering to include rhubarb in the lineup.
Spring-into-summer is a celebratory parade of gastronomic gateways. Nettles, ramps, fiddleheads, asparagus, rhubarb,… So many seasonal ingredients and tastes. And now it’s radish time… These early French Breakfast Radishes are almost impossibly delicious. Crisp and spicy. Uniquely refreshing.
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Perhaps four years living in Paris account for my preference, but these early season benisons — as enticing to the eyes as to the tongue — beguile me year after year. (Source: Ready for Radish Time?)
A little over a year ago, on June 2, 2024 I waxed wordy — a little too wordy if hindsight’s a trustworthy editor — once again on radish season.
It’s radish time at last, and the French Breakfast Radish (Raphanus sativus), a red-skinned root vegetable in the Brassicaceae family with a white splash at the root end, is my favorite. Crisp and refreshing, not too woody or spicy (at least if harvested before hotter days over-mature it), and oh-so beautiful, this late spring through early summer classic is a perennial staple of Rosslyn’s vegetable garden.
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The French Breakfast Radish tends to be mild (less “spicy” than other standard radishes) if harvested and eaten early. Widely considered a spring radish, it’s ideally grown and harvested when temperatures are still cool. Hotter temperatures increase the “spiciness” (peppery bitterness common to most radishes) and often result in a pithy interior. (Source: French Breakfast Radish)
It seems appropriate to wind down with the slightly ominous potential for pithy spiciness when the weather grows hot. For today is indeed hot. Hot! And humid. Which, of course, makes it feel even hotter. We’ll enjoy radish season on an accelerated timeline this year to make sure that late planting, stalled germination, and this sudden swing from cold to hot don’t render our French Breakfast Radishes too woody and too piquant.
Radish Season Rhythms & Rewards
Whether sown with March optimism or delayed by April rains, whether harvested in perfect May coolness or rushed by the arrival of July’s harsh heat, these red and white ambassadors of springtime never fail to remind us that gardening — like life itself — rarely follows our predictions and tidy expectations. And so here we are, our 2025 radish season peaking on an unseasonably hot day in June. Through years of anticipation and years of abundance, soggy delays and sun-soaked harvests, each season carries its own unique rhythm and reward.
This may well be the most meaningful and enduring gift of radish season. Beyond eye-catching beauty and peppery crunch, these early root vegetables remind us to embrace the conditions we’re given, not the conditions we planned. Too late, too hurried, too hot? Fret not. Savor that first tongue tingling bite. Celebrate the spicy exclamation mark that announces summer’s imminent arrival. Harvest with gratitude. Eat with gusto. And next year we’ll begin the cycle anew with eager anticipation and optimism for radish season.
What do you think?