Growing A Daikon (part 1)

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Japanese root vegetable is gaining adherents in Russia

• A bit of history
• Consumer properties of daikon
• Features of culture
• Growing daikon in a crop rotation. Daikon varieties
• Seed preparation

Last summer, at the agricultural exhibition-fair "Agrorus", on behalf of the House of Gardeners, I consulted visitors, telling them about the cultivation of a relatively new culture for our region - daikon. In Russia this vegetable is often called "sweet Japanese radish". Visitors asked many questions, tasted the radish, and praised its taste together. Some of them complained that, they say, they had also tried to grow it, but it didn’t work … I was convinced, communicating with visitors, that the majority of St. Petersburg gardeners had not heard anything about this useful culture and had seen it for the first time.

Therefore, I decided everything that I had learned in recent years about the daikon, and about my experience of growing this useful crop, to tell the readers of the magazine and my listeners at the garden courses.

A bit of history

In pre-war Japan, the daikon had about the same meaning as the radish is now for our gardeners. After the atomic bombing of this country by America in August 1945, the surviving population of Japan was affected by radiation sickness, and most of the territory and coastal waters were contaminated with radioactive dust. The industrial boom that followed later, again with the help of the same America, although it brought Japan to the second place in the world in terms of economic power, did not improve the country's ecology.

In parallel with these events, painstaking and effective breeding work with the daikon was carried out there. More than 400 varieties and hybrids have been bred. NI Vavilov called the famous daikon Sarukadzima variety, which is capable of forming ecologically clean giant root crops weighing up to 40 kg in the south of Japan, as a world masterpiece of plant breeding! Thanks to their excellent taste, nutritional value, medicinal, dietary and ecological properties, new varieties of daikon have entered the daily menu of the Japanese. Early maturity, high yields and total demand prompted Japanese farmers to switch to mass cultivation of the daikon.

In terms of the area occupied, this crop took first place among all vegetables. For example, in 1987 the daikon occupied 70,000 hectares out of 635,000 hectares allotted for all vegetables. Daikon production and consumption that year was 2.6 million tonnes. Subsequently, consumption of daikon increased annually and in 2000 amounted to 3.5 million tons. The missing 0.9 million tons to meet the demand were imported from neighboring countries.

The health of the Japanese has improved phenomenally, which is convincingly shown in the tables. I hope it's clear what the phenomenon is?

Daikon is popular not only in Japan. It is cultivated in all countries where climatic and soil conditions allow it. For more than 10 years, active work has been carried out in Russia to introduce daikon. Domestic varieties and hybrids have been created. Seven of them are zoned in the Leningrad region and are recommended for use in individual farms. There are seeds for sale, and yet the setting with daikon in our horticultures is reminiscent of the setting with potatoes in Russia in the second half of the 17th century. There are no only Senate decrees and a whip!

Consumer properties of daikon

The pulp of daikon root is crispy, juicy, tender and, most importantly, completely devoid of specific rare bitterness, which allows even children and the elderly to use it in unlimited quantities, without fear of harmful effects on the heart and liver. Daikon root vegetable is rich in calcium and potassium salts, its fiber contains up to 8% dry matter, 2.5% sugar, 13-14 mg% vitamin C, enzymes, glycosides, pectin substances.

Daikon is eaten fresh, boiled and salted. In March - April, they eat daikon sprouts - a valuable source of beta-carotene, proteins, a large group of vitamins and biologically active substances. In my family, the most popular are his peeled root vegetables, grated on a coarse grater, without any additives. It is said that the eaten pulp of this radish dissolves stones in the liver and kidneys, helps in the treatment of radiation sickness and diabetes, and daikon juice is able to strengthen the hair roots.

But the most important property of daikon for us is its ecological purity. Scientists have found that this plant does not absorb heavy metal salts and radioactive elements from the earth. However, when it is eaten, the daikon removes from the human body all these harmful elements that have come there with other products, including vegetables. The scientist-breeder of some Russian varieties of daikon V. I. Startsev gives a very illustrative example: "… They brought salts of heavy metals, radioactive substances into the ground (moreover, there were variants with a significant excess of their permissible content in the ground) and sowed various root crops. removal of harmful elements. The result was always in favor of the daikon. His "relative" radish (Russian black) gained 16 times more harmful substances. " For this he jokingly called the daikon "friend of man. "I now fully share this opinion of the scientist.

Experts believe that in our country the daikon, as a carbohydrate crop, should take second place in the diet of people right after potatoes. At my site, I introduced daikon on an ongoing basis into my vegetable-potato crop rotation. Dear readers, I will tell you how I grow it.

Features of culture

Daikon belongs to the cabbage family. It is a one to two year old plant. In the first year, it forms roots with a half-raised or spreading rosette of leaves. Daikon varieties differ: by the shape of the root crop - round, oval, cylindrical, conical, stick-shaped and others; by immersing the root crop in the soil - by 1/3 of its length, by 1/2, by 2/3 and completely; according to the reaction to the length of daylight hours - to those resistant to flowering and with the absence thereof.

Unlike radish, daikon root vegetables retain their juiciness and good taste even when the plants move to shooting (flowering). Daikon is an unpretentious plant and can grow on various types of soil, but it gives the best results on light fertile soils with deep groundwater and late harvesting. A remarkable feature of the daikon lies in the fact that the larger its root crop, the more juicy and sweeter it becomes, without losing other qualities of the pulp.

Growing daikon in a crop rotation. Daikon varieties

In my plan for planting vegetables for 2003, even in winter I provided for two beds for sowing daikon in spring, I planned two more beds for it in the second planting date - after harvesting early potatoes and winter garlic. When purchasing seeds for the spring sowing, I did not forget about the daikon. After studying the seed catalogs, popular literature on this crop, I decided to purchase four suitable seed varieties, including two stem resistant varieties for spring planting. I stopped my choice on daikon varieties:

Sasha (Russia). Early ripe. The period from germination to harvest is 35-40 days. Root crops are round or round-oval, white, smooth. Length 6-10 cm, diameter 5-9 cm. Weight 0.2-0.4 kg. The pulp is tender, dense, crispy, juicy. The taste is excellent. The root crop is half submerged in the soil. Storage for 1-2 months. Relatively resistant to premature steming and bacteriosis, heat-resistant.

F1 Ttsukushi spring cross (Japan). Mid-early hybrid. From sowing to harvesting 60-65 days. Root crops are cylindrical, with light green shoulders. The optimal size of the root crop for harvesting: diameter 7 cm, length 25-27 cm. The pulp is dense, crispy, good taste, slowly flabby. Indispensable for spring sowing. The only proven hybrid, resistant to flowers, assures the firm "NK". It has a small rosette of leaves and is suitable for dense planting. Grows well at low temperatures. Resistant to blackleg and root rot.

Dubinushka (Russia). Mid-season variety. The period from germination to harvest is 55-60 days. The root crop is cylindrical, white with a yellow-green head. Length 30-45 cm, diameter 5-7 cm, weight 0.5-2 kg. The taste is sweetish, refreshing. Suitable for long-term storage.

Minovase (Japan). Mid-season variety. The period from germination to harvesting is 50-60 days. The shape of the root crop is cylindrical or elongated-conical, length 40-45 cm, diameter 7-9 cm, the flesh is dense, crispy, very juicy. The taste is excellent. The root crop is 3/4 buried in the soil.

So, the selection of varieties is done, closer to spring, the search for seeds began. The Sasha variety was in almost every store and stall. I bought two packages. Then I bought the Japanese Long variety - its image on the bag was very similar to Minovase's daikon. Until July 3, I was looking for varieties of Ttsukushi, Minovase and Dubinushka. But on that day, in one of the "Seeds" stalls, I bought the Minovase variety and another package of plasma-treated Sasha seeds. The search ended there.

Seed preparation

I sort out the seeds of any crops, the size of which makes it possible to notice the existing defects. At the same time, I use tweezers to separate the largest of them, which have no visible defects. For this procedure, I use a candy box, divided into two parts by a glued partition. I count the largest and highest-quality copies and pour them into a branded bag. On the package I indicate the number of seeds and the date of the bulkhead. I pour small and defective seeds into a homemade bag and use them in March, April in a city apartment for seedlings.