Raphanus among us
The garden was calm Sunday morning. Rocky patch at the lower end was bare already but snow covered everything else. Shapes made by the larger rocks outlining the beds add character. Gray-green sage leaves had turned brownish by weather.
During my tour, I was cited for several misdemeanors such as failure to take down that rickety trellis, mulch delivery overdue, and somebody needs to prune the blackberries. There were others… henbit covering the oregano bed like green manure, for example, although it’s frozen, so does it matter? I think I’ll call it an experiment.
There are so many things to do a gardener might need to make a list, which is a great idea because it would give me time to avoid putting off not doing anything in this busy world.
Which brings me to the point – the nearest radish festival to Eureka Springs I’ve been able to identify is in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is 29 hours away by road trip or 5.5 hours by plane. There’s only two months of winter left, so gardeners can almost smell spring planting time, and the first seeds to go in might be Early Scarlet Globe radishes. Therefore, it is natural to wonder what it would be like for locals if Eureka Springs established itself as the Radish Capital of the South!
Radishes (Raphanus sativa) grow well here and most anywhere. Depending on who’s counting, but there are more than 30 Raphanus varieties in colors from white to black with stops along the way at most points in the crayon box. Some bright red ones are round and one inch in diameter. The bright pink Cincinnati Market radish is one inch in diameter but nine inches long. A white Japanese Minowase daikon is three-inches in diameter and two-feet long. The round Black Spanish radish can get bigger than a softball.
With the various colors and shapes, arts and crafts possibilities await, and we are artists. It’s a tradition in Japan and Korea to carve dolls out of radishes, and we can do that in Basin Park on a Saturday afternoon. All we need is a boxcar of radishes… and a boxcar.
Every year in Oaxaca two days before Christmas, regular folks carve large radishes into figurines of religious or popular heroes. It’s a well-anticipated event in the community, and if we did this at the Community Center on a Saturday afternoon, I guess out of 100 carved radishes, we’d get 15 Tom Pettys, eight Barack Obamas and 52 Steven Fosters.
There is also the culinary opportunity at our radish festivals. Raphanus lends itself to awesome kim chi. And who’s going to brew the first radish beer? If there can be garlic ice cream and parsnip wine, there can be radish beer.
You can roast your radishes. You can make cole slaw. Watermelon radishes have green skins and bright red interiors, and our local genius chefs could use them in a nutritious artistic salad with seasonal greens, beets and walnuts.
Speaking of nutrition, our third-grade teachers – bless their hearts – can implant into the minds of their eager charges the lifelong lesson of how important radishes are to our daily intake of pyrogallol, glucosinolate and our other favorite molecules which protect against sugar imbalances and cancer. If Ben Franklin had eaten radishes instead of apples, he would have had a different aphorism. Plus, radishes are full of vitamin C and minerals and everything missing in Fritos.
Did I mention there are winter radishes? That means there is the opportunity for two radish festivals each year. The Shawo radish from Mongolia is a bright green winter variety sweet enough to be a fruit substitute, so radish sherbets or smoothies?
All I’m saying is it’s winter dreaming time now, and the full moon hangs over us like a White Hailstone radish. Maybe it’s a sign of things to come.