I learned another valuable lesson with the garden when ALL the radishes ripened SIMULTANEOUSLY and I had little red balls coming out of my ears (nice visual, huh). I harvested a giant batch before going out of town for a week, only to find another giant batch awaiting my return. And the second batch had actually grown hip high (36” without my Jimmy Choo’s on, and yes, I measured) and had sprouted flowers. With ADHD once again in control, I pulled every one of the cursed radishes out of the ground and threw them into a giant pile. It was just too much and I really couldn’t eat anymore of them. I might not be able to eat them for a few years and right now, just seeing one makes me all squinty eyed and crabby.
The lessons I learned from my ADHD style of gardening…
1. No matter how tedious it is to plant seeds, they must be planted slowly and spaced according to the package directions. Silly to think that Burpee would have thought to include all these directions on the back of the package in both written words and in pictures with nice arrowed line to determine the correct spacing…and that I would actually READ IT!
2. In the event that the seeds fall a little too close to each other, it really is important to play a divine being and be willing to kill a few seedlings so that the others have room to grow forward and prosper.
3. DO NOT, under any circumstances, plant all the seeds from a seed packet at the same time. No matter how great the temptation is, resist. Look around at the water to lower your enthusiasm level and just drop a portion of the packet on the soil. Better yet, before you even leave the comfort of your garden preparation center (in this case, my kitchen counter), put just the number of seeds you want to plant in a shot glass, and then go and sow some wild oats. (In the other shot glass, a small pinch of tequila can’t hurt either.)
4. At harvest time, find friends who indulge your radish fetish so that you can share your bountiful cornucopia of radish booty.
All in all, the first harvest of the year has been informative, educational, and tasty. Now, we’re on to the next crop to mature – catnip.
