Vegetable · Brassicaceae
When to plant radishes
Three to four weeks from sowing to plate. The ideal crop for testing whether your soil is ready.
Sow direct
4 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
22-30
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make radishes plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 4 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 22–30 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 10 days for a continuous supply.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop.
Getting the timing right
Sow every week in spring and autumn. Summer sowings turn woody and hot - stop when daytime temperatures pass 25C and resume in late summer.
Frost tolerance
Handles -6C easily and is often the first and last thing harvested in the year.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -6°C (21.2°F)21.2°F (-6°C).