📌 Quick Summary: Stop Your Daikon from Bolting
- 🛑 The Bolting Problem: If your daikon radish is sending up flower stalks (bolting) instead of growing a thick root, you are planting it at the wrong time. Spring/early summer planting triggers seed production due to long daylight hours.
- 📅 The Golden Window: The secret to giant daikon is planting it in late July or early August. As the days get shorter going into fall, the plant focuses entirely on root growth.
- ♻️ Perfect Crop Rotation: Daikon is the ultimate succession crop. As soon as you pull your hardneck garlic, onions, or early potatoes in July, pop daikon seeds right into that empty bed!
- 🐛 Bug Preferences: Interestingly, pests often prefer colored radishes (like Misato Red) over white varieties (like Mino Summer Cross).
Luda, have your pumpkins set any fruit yet? I’ve been struggling for 3 years and can’t get it right. I have an Australian Butter and a Butternut, and neither has set fruit yet. The butternut is just now getting ready to flower. I bought a blossom-set spray today, maybe I should spray them? The Australian Butter already has 3 or 4 long vines, should I pinch them all off? I really want to master growing pumpkins!
Also, regarding radishes – I used to grow daikon without any issues, but for the last three years, it just bolts (goes to seed) or the roots never mature. Any advice?
Yangun wrote:
…for the last three years, it just bolts (goes to seed) or the roots never mature.
I plant my daikon at the end of July. It has never bolted on me. Here is the one I grew last year–honestly, it’s almost excessively huge in my opinion…
Good day to everyone! 😊
Natko wrote:
Here is the one I grew last year…
Natasha, what a beauty, pure magic! What variety is that?
Natko wrote:
I plant my daikon at the end of July.
Natasha, wonderful daikon. Do you plant it at the *very* end of July, or just sometime in the third week? I was just thinking today that I need to plant some daikon. I plan to pull my garlic at the end of July and pop the daikon right into that empty spot.
Aleksan9ra wrote:
What variety is that?
Good afternoon!
Luda, the white one is Mino Summer Cross.
And here is the Misato Red I showed before. Though, it’s a bit closer in texture to a traditional radish. Believe it or not, it’s still sitting perfectly in my fridge!
Olvika70 wrote:
Do you plant it at the very end of July, or just sometime in the third week?
I plant in the very last days of July, or sometimes even early August (my memory isn’t what it used to be!). But yes, I plant it as a succession crop right after harvesting the garlic, onions, or early potatoes.
Oh, and those spots on the red one – that’s where bugs were chewing on it, and it scarred over. They only went after the red one; they completely ignored the white one, even though half of it sits in the dirt and the other 8 to 12 inches (20-30 cm) grows straight up above the ground!
Natko wrote:
…even though half of it sits in the dirt and the other 8 to 12 inches (20-30 cm) grows straight up above the ground!
Natasha! Thank you! That is incredibly helpful and very tempting, I might have to try it!
