Nature girl, radish edition

While I love the thought of being completely food sufficient, I know better. My gardening skills are entwined with the name of this blog...."Flying by the Seat of My Pants". It's always a crap-shoot on if something will work for me, and since gardening is a lot of that anyway, the odds are always stacked against me...and the plants who are in my care.

I did manage to get some organic radish seeds going in the greenhouse and although I transplanted several seedling into the garden bed, only two took. Hubby thinks I'm not loosening the soil up enough when I plant seeds and seedlings. I think he's right. I tend to just make a whole or trough and in goes the seed or plant. I see pictures of people I follow who are great gardeners and one thing they don't have around their beautiful and luscious plants is hard, packed soil. I really need to pay more attention to that from here on out!

But. All of that being said, I did manage to grow two radishes!!! Hubby said he thinks I didn't plant them deep enough and that I probably picked them too early, but I was just so excited and eager to taste them! He was wrong when he said they probably wouldn't have much flavor, they were PERFECT.  And of course, my kitty had to check them out too. She will cry pitifully at the window and dance around my feet when I come inside until I bring her something fresh from outside for her to smell, rub up against, or play with.

And in my efforts to use up as much as I could (I do take my kitchen scraps to a local chemical-free farmer for his compost piles), I decided to try and make radish top pesto! I usually make a pumpkin seed and basil pesto, which is cheese-free but tastes like there's some in there, and it is my absolute favorite! But when I did a little looking online, I was intrigued by the recipes using radish tops. I seriously doubted I would like it, and after handling the prickly little dudes, I thought for sure I'd choke and gag, but the recipes ensured me that the texture of them raw was completely unnoticeable in the pesto.

So I tried this recipe, from Food.com.
https://www.food.com/recipe/radish-leaf-radish-top-pesto-435728

And my verdict? I LOVED it! I did modify it a tad for the machine I was using to make it, and what I had on hand. I probably didn't have 2-3 cups of the greens, but it still turned out! I keep a container of minced garlic in the fridge and that's what I used instead of the fresh, I used more than two tablespoons of olive oil because there's a certain consistency that I prefer and again, the machine I was using is a cranky gremlin. I used the cup container that was too big, not thinking ahead to the bushy greens getting mashed down in the blending process. A little more olive oil helped keep things moving (although it might look really liquidy in the picture, it was the right state of solid for my likings). I left out the sugar and used almonds in place of pine nuts (because $20 a bag, yo?! I'll use what I have on hand, thank you very much). A bit of  fresh ground Himalayan salt, but no pepper, sprinkled with some freeze-dried organic basil. And yum!!!

It was just the right amount for me, since nobody else was interested in trying it and, yes, the texture was perfect! No choking or gagging for me! So I ran outside and tried planting some more seeds in the garden. I'm sure it's not the right time of year now, but you never know what will take, so it's worth a try! I will definitely make this pesto again anytime I have radish greens on hand!