Round Purple Radish Seeds (Raphanus sativus)

Raphanus sativus

Round purple radish, Gournay purple radish, purple radish: its deep purple skin contrasts with bright white flesh — cut in half, it always makes an impression on a raw vegetable platter. An old spring variety, it reaches maturity in around forty days.

Characteristics:

• Purple and white contrast: highly decorative when sliced or cut in half.
• Good flavor: crisp, with a moderate, pronounced pepperiness.
• Maturity in 40 days: a very quick harvest, ideal for beginners.
• Can be grown in a planter: perfect for a terrace or balcony.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: sunny, or partially shaded in hot weather, in a temperate climate.
• Soil: cool, loose, humus-rich and well-drained, preferably slightly sandy. Avoid stones, which deform the root, and fresh manure, which causes it to fork.
• Method: sow directly in the ground, 1 cm deep, spacing the rows 10 to 15 cm apart. Sow thinly and stagger sowings every two weeks. See how to sow your seeds.

Care advice:

• Thin to 4 cm if the seedlings are crowded. Keep the soil moist but not waterlogged.
• The decisive factor: consistent watering. A thirsty radish becomes hot, hollow and fibrous — this is the number one cause of failure.

Harvesting advice:

• Harvest as soon as they have reached a satisfactory size, generally after 4 to 6 weeks. Don’t wait: the root becomes hollow quickly.
• The leaves can be cooked in soup or made into pesto.

Beneficial combinations:

• Sown with the carrot, it emerges quickly and marks the row. Avoid planting it near cucumbers and zucchini. Also see the round yellow radish and companion planting in the vegetable garden.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• If left to flower, it produces white to lilac flowers that are heavily visited by bees and hoverflies, whose larvae devour aphids.
• Its green, crisp and peppery pods can be nibbled raw as an appetizer.

Uses:

• Raw with salt, with butter on bread, in salads or pickles — vinegar brings out its purple color.

Harvesting your own seeds:
Let a few plants flower, then form their swollen pods. Harvest them when thoroughly dry and shell them. Be careful: Raphanus sativus plants cross-pollinate with one another, so isolate your seed plants from other radishes. See how to store your seeds.

Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Volcanoes of Auvergne, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to restore gardeners’ ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

An old radish with deep purple coloring, ready in six weeks.