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BR504-a
Big round black skinned radish with a sweet crimson red interior. Only plant after mid-July.
This is a variety developed by Tourne-Sol. It is an evolving plant population with a lot of genetic diversity. That means the plants are not uniform and they don’t all look the same. They are all edible, beautiful and delicious.
Crop Species: Raphanus sativus
Crop Family: Brassicaceae
Imagine cutting into a Black Radish and revealing a deep red inside.
This was the vision that led my first winter Radish breeding project.
I planted some Black Radish (black outside and white inside) besides some Watermelon Radish (white/green outside and red inside) with the intention of crossing them up.
The radishes went to flower.
And the bees and the flies and all the pollinators did their thing carrying pollen amongst the flowers, not caring what variety was what,
In the first generation after the cross, most of the Black Radish seed produced Black Radishes. And most Watermelon Radish seed produced Watermelon Radishes. These seeds had not crossed up - they’d been pollinated by their own pollen.
But there were also some purple radishes growing in the rows. Purple with black blotches on the outside and the insides were like Amethyst.
These had definitely crossed up and they had produced something totally unexpected.Where had that purple come from? This was the F1 generation.
I kept the seeds from the purple radishes and grew them out.
In the F2 generation, many of the characteristics we’d started out with showed up again but they were all mixed up. There were radishes with
I isolated the last group from the rest and kept their seed.
We’ve been selecting these radishes for over 10 years and we have two lines: Black Crimson Radish with red flesh and Black Amethyst Radish with purple flesh.
Please note that these radishes are still not fully stable, you will find a diversity of colours in this population. But they are still pretty exciting!
Pull a couple of radishes to see if they have sized up. If they haven’t yet sized up, wait a couple more days. Radishes can easily be pulled by hand. Rub or rinse off the dirt.
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100% Organic
No GMOs
++ Biodiversity
