The surprise of a winter radish

Winter radishes might be looked upon quizzically these days and are not so easy to come by, but that wasn’t always so. In the early 19th century, radishes were a staple in the winter garden, a crop that provided nourishment and variety when little else could be coaxed from the soil. Home gardeners were encouraged to plant them for their ease of maintenance and longevity. In a root cellar or cold storage, they keep for four to six months, with nearly indiscernible compromise in flavor or texture.

But widespread winter gardening carried on only until industrialization and its associated conveniences rendered it unnecessary. “When food became available and cheap, that was one of the things that fell by the wayside,” says Ira Wallace, a staff member at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange in Mineral, Va., and an organizer of the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello.

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Winter radishes went the way of the rutabaga, and today, certain varieties are less likely to be recognized for what they are than mistaken for turnips or puzzled over entirely.

Credit small-scale farmers with bringing them back to our tables. In the Washington area, local growers/farmers market vendors such as Tree & Leaf Farm, the Farm at Sunnyside, New Morning Produce and Next Step Produce are increasingly relying on radishes as a cool-season crop, in part because a single harvest can produce months of sales.

“Radishes are really low-maintenance,” says Nicholas Kohl, a farmer at the Farm at Sunnyside, which produces Black Spanish and watermelon radishes, the pink-fleshed radishes also known as Misato Rose. “They’re something you really don’t have to worry about.”

At Tree & Leaf Farm in Unionville, Va., Zach Lester grows eight varieties of winter radishes, including the lavender Hilds Blauer, a German heirloom; two types of Black Spanish radishes; the petal-pink China Rose variety; and the daikon-related Green Luobo and Misato Rose. When he plants more than he needs — which is easy to do with radishes, he notes — he leaves some in the fields to decompose and enrich the soil with, among other nutrients, deposits of plant-loving nitrogen and phosphorus.

Radishes weren’t always a focus of Lester’s growing cycle. About seven years ago, he was growing only cherry-red spring radishes and remembers that a dissatisfied CSA (community-supported agriculture) customer ticked off three reasons on a comment card why he probably wouldn’t resubscribe. The third reason, punctuated liberally for emphasis, was that radishes didn’t count as a vegetable.

“Like, they’re only half a vegetable” was the gist of it, Lester says. “Actually, I think that’s when I realized I wanted to be a radish farmer.”

At Washington area farmers markets, winter radishes begin showing up as early as October, bunched together with their sweet, peppery greens still attached. (Don’t think of throwing these away; they’re nearly perfect braised lightly with olive oil and lemon, and you’ll feel thrifty and smug for keeping them out of the trash.) But unless you, like Mr. Beard, are especially enamored of radishes, it’s easy to overlook them in autumn, among this region’s usually resplendent fall harvest. It’s later, in those cold, unflinching months leading to spring, in a season defined more by what it lacks than by what it gives, that cooks and growers can most appreciate the radish for its generosity in the kitchen and in the field.

RECIPES:

Radish Risotto

Fermented Radishes

Grated Radish Salad

Roasted Radishes

Horton, a Washington food writer, will join today’s Free Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.