Sow With Abandon
Sprouted radishes! Yum! About 2 weeks ago, my daughter Kyra and I planted the “greens space” in our garden. We used baling twine and bamboo kabob skewers to mark off the space in our garden. I then stretched Kyra’s stiff wrist and fingers open, filled her palm with seeds, and she sowed with abandon. She giggled wildly as the seeds blew through the air, stuck in the cervices of her wheelchair, made her cat sneeze, and fell to the ground. Some even fell into our marked-off garden space.
About a week later, we could see a bit of green poking through the ground in great bunches. Radishes! Spinach! Swiss chard! Beets!
After another week, we started to thin the bunched radish seedlings so that some of them could grow and swell and become, well, radishes.
Just a little tug plucks a baby radish from its crowded location in the garden. A tiny tap knocks away chunks of soil from the slim root. A quick swish of water, if you think it’s necessary, finishes the prep work. Then pop the seedling into your mouth, your salad, and definitely your g-tube meals, for a bite of fresh, spicy spring.
Radishes, and especially radish greens, are chock-full of vitamin C and calcium. As one of the cruciferous veggies (that’s veggies with lots of sulphur-based chemicals, like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale and brussel sprouts), they contain properties that help fight off cancer, maintain liver function, and aid digestion (everynutrient.com).
Radishes grow nearly anywhere, and their quick germination and growth provide the closest thing to immediate gratification as a gardener can get. You can grow radishes outside your back door, or indoors in a flower pot, an old sauce pan, or an empty cottage cheese container placed in a sunny window or near your desk lamp. Even if ready-to-feed, nutritionally-complete, g-tube formulas happen to include all the micro-nutrients of a radish, it certainly does not include the joy that comes from sowing seeds with abandon, and harvesting the results.
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