Radishes are one of my favorite things to grow in the garden. I always scatter the seeds rather than try to plant them individually in rows. It’s faster and uses space more efficiently. Once they sprout, you can start to thin them by gently pulling up the ones that are crowded. Sometimes I’m really good at keeping up with this task, other times I put it off just a little too long. When that happens, though, there’s a silver lining: a big bunch of baby radish greens! 

A lot of folks might toss these in the compost, or – heaven forbid – the trash. Not me. A quick wash, a little bit of chopping, and very little time yield a delicious, healthy side dish just packed with nutrition.

Radishes are excellent early season crops. They mature very quickly, so are often one of the first veggies ready for harvest. The hotter the weather, the hotter the radish, so the early-season ones don’t have too much bite. And root maggots tend to be around later in the season, so those early radishes need no pesticides to stay pristine. Sorry if you’re put off by the idea of root maggots. One of the inescapable truths of gardening is bugs and other wildlife. You either have to live with them, try to repel them, or block them out with row covers. Or poison them, but I rarely resort to that. I like my produce to be poison-free!

I’ve been gardening in Earthboxes up on tables for years now, since my spine woes made it impossible for me to garden in the ground. A few years ago, a carpenter bee colony set up shop in one of my tables. It has taken me a while to get used to them, but they don’t bother me at all anymore. Good thing, too, because there are now several colonies. They are huge, loud (though that doesn’t come through in the video), and pushy, always buzzing around me and trying to scare me off. Sometimes they even bump into me but usually seem more startled by that than I am. They’re easy to avoid by gardening early in the morning when it’s still cool. But once I learned that the males are the ones guarding the colony, and – this bit is crucial – the males do not possess stingers, I just garden right alongside them.

Ingredients:

1 large bunch of baby radish greens

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion, about 5 oz (140 g)

2 cloves garlic

1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

⅛ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon pepper

Preparation:

1.) Wash any dirt from the greens, then spin or pat dry. Chop the onions.

2.) Heat the oil on medium-high. When it’s shimmering, add the onions and sauté until softened and beginning to brown.

3.) While the onions cook, mince the garlic. Add it to the pan and cook until fragrant, about a minute.

4.) Roughly chop the radish greens.

5.) Add the greens to the pan with a little water. Cook just until wilted, only a minute or two.

6.) Stir in the basil, salt, and pepper.