The Radish Experiment

We grow a lot of our dahlias at an offsite plot and the owner of that plot has chickens. During the winter we often use daikon radish as part of our cover crop. Turns out that the chickens love the radish greens.

Well obviously they disappear once we terminate our cover crop so I decided to try an experiment so the chickens can have more radishes (and hopefully keep some weeds down) Anything for the chickies!

We have 2 rows of dahlias in this plot that are planted 2 across in a 4’ wide bed instead of the 4 across that we usually do so those rows tend to get very weedy on the edges.

These are the hurricane survivors by the way. It took them awhile to get going but they look great now!

So I went to my local feed and seed and bought a pound of radish seed and sprinkled a row down the edge of the bed. I seeded pretty generously so that there would be enough to help cover the soil and prevent weeds. But also so we could have enough to pull to feed the chickens.

We got a great rain the evening after I sowed these so hopefully in a few days, we will see little radish sprouts! I’ll keep you posted.

Update (7/23/25)- Radishes germinated well but I definitely need to work on seeding evenly. In the left picture you can see a 10’ stretch of row and how it’s a bit sparse in some areas. The right picture shows a close up of a well seeded area- This is what I’m going for. I reseeded after I took these pictures and we had good rain yesterday so hopefully the second time works!