Garden Surprise - Mystery Solved

As I mentioned in my Garden Adventure post earlier this year, I had no deer for a while so I decided to plant a garden. One of the things I planted was an assortment of lettuces.  Everything was going fine until one day I noticed something strange.  There was this white thing sticking up out of the ground.  As far as I knew, lettuce didn't grow big thick roots like that, so I took a picture and put it on Facebook, asking my friends if they could identify this plant.

I got all kinds of responses, running from white carrot and parsnip to horseradish.  After checking out those plants online, I knew it wasn't any of them.  I still had a mystery on my hands.  And for some reason, I stopped eating the leaves.  I mean, I had planted lettuce, and this sure wasn't a lettuce, so I wasn't eating it until I knew more.

A friend of ours, Brian Henderson,  used to be the horticultural professor at Algonquin.  He's now the head gardener at Upper Canada Village.  While out prowling the countryside one day, we stopped in for a visit.  As we were about to leave, I mentioned this strange plant and he said it sounded like a Daikon Radish.  I had never heard of such a thing, but I must have described it really well because, when I looked it up online, that's certainly what I had. 

I read that they don't mind a hard frost, so I left it in the ground until this week when morning temperatures were often around minus 7C. Then I dug it up, washed it off, removed and stored the leaves and wondered what to do with the thing.  The younger leaves can be used in salads, as I had been doing in the beginning.  The bigger leaves can apparently be cooked like spinach, or used in recipes calling for spinach or kale.  The root itself, I figured could be grated and used in salads too.

A friend came for tea yesterday, and I showed her what I had accidentally grown.  She knew what it was right away, and said she always had to get hers at a farmer's market!  I asked her what she did with them, and she told me they were good in stir fries and stew.  I was planning on having a meal of pork shoulder chops, with onions, potatoes and carrots all cooked in the same pan.  I decided this was a good time to try cooking some of my Daikon radish too.  It was actually very good, and now I'm planning on creating a stir fry soon.

Like my friend,  I will be looking for these daikon radishes at farmer's markets in the future. I can't imagine growing a whole row of these things as one is good for several meals!  One or two a year will make a nice change of pace though, so I will be looking forward to finding them.

Finding this new vegetable growing in my garden was a much better surprise than finding that the deer had eaten all my hostas, as they had for the past couple of years.  That's for sure!

Garden Adventures

I gave up trying to grow vegetables several years back because the deer were getting more of them than I was. But I have not seen any sign of deer here for over a year, so this year I decided to plant a few things.  I put in an assortment of lettuce, an assortment of tomatoes, and a few pumpkins.

The lettuce was nice and I learned I like more than just the usual iceberg and romaine that I tend to buy.  I'll likely try that again next year, but I bet something comes along and eats it. I can't be this lucky two years in a row, surely.

With this year's drought conditions, the pumpkins didn't get enough water so, while they produced lots of flowers, I don't see any actual pumpkins on the vines.  It may be just as well as I had no idea that they would climb everything in sight.  They went into my bushes, up the tomato cages, and even climbed up my rose bush.  Bright orange flowers in unusual places have amused me all summer, so I don't really feel like that idea failed. I'd try that again too, but since I already placed the plants at the edge of the garden thinking I could coax the vines out onto the grass, I'm not really sure how to keep them from climbing all over what ever other crop I choose to plant next time.

I just heard from some friends recently that they have so many tomatoes that they are busy making one thing after another out of them.  Here's where I feel that I really succeeded.  At Canadian Tire I bought a pack that contained a variety of tomatoes, including a cherry tomato. We like those so I also purchased another variety of cherry tomatoes as well. One grew upright, and the other sent vines all over the ground. I don't see the tags so I'm still not sure which one is which.   One of the other plants in the pack is also a cherry sized species, but they are yellow and pear shaped. Nice and mild.

The nice thing about this variety pack is that the various tomatoes all have different maturity dates.  So far I have had some Old Time Tasty tomatoes, some Early Girl, and some Better Boy.  The Old Time ones are indeed tasty, but more acidic and a bit bigger than the other two. They are short and squat, while the Early Girl have an almost pointed bottom.  The Better Boy may be considered better because it seems to be more prolific than the others.  If I ever do have trouble keeping up with the crop, that's the one that may produce more than one ripe tomato at a time.  Yet to come is the beefsteak.  I'm not fond of big tomatoes, but I only see a few on that plant so far, so things are working out quite well.  Every day for a while now, we have fresh tomatoes of some variety.  There is usually a little bowl full of the cherry sized ones, and there may be one or two of the others waiting to be eaten also.  They are the perfect size to be eaten at one meal, so none of them have yet landed in my fridge.  I definitely hope Canadian Tire decides to offer this variety pack again next year.