The harshness of mid-November took its toll and our beautifully yellow-green beds of oilseed radishes are dying back early this year. 

It's fascinating to see which plants succumb first.  The ones on the shaded, north sides of beds in the least-sun-exposed front garden turned slimey over a week ago, followed by overmature plants and overcrowded young plants elsewhere.  In stark contrast, the pasture of oilseed radishes, although it grew slowly in the partial shade during the fall, is still looking vibrantly green due to the mitigating effects of the trees overhead.

For comparison's sake, we didn't see our radishes decline like this until January last year.  That means we're probably getting less biomass bang for our seed buck this year, and will need to lay down a mulch to keep winter weeds at bay before long.  But I think the oilseeds still paid for themselves even with the shorter growing cycle.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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