Cover Crop---Tillage Radish

We recently took a drive around the vineyard just to make sure that things in the north end looked okay, while we worked exclusively on the south end, digging the trench for the irrigation pipes. As we made our way on the west side of the vineyard, my husband spied something green growing in one of the rows. It is not an easy thing to go against the grain of the trellis wires, so he had me doing the reverse-limbo under the fruiting wire to check out what the green thing was in the vineyard. When I got to the green thing, it was a tillage radish that had survived the many passes of the grape hoe! I pulled it out and it was huge!

We planted the seeds for this cover crop in early November of 2013 and we had germination and growth a few weeks later, but since we planted the seeds so late in the year, we didn't really reap the benefits of the tillage radish.
You can see from this photo that the taproot of the tillage radish is huge and extends a good 8-inches. The benefit of the tillage radish in compacted soils, is that it will rot in place during the winter and leave behind soil that has been loosened and aerated. Another benefit is that tillage radish is what we call daikon in Japanese and it is totally edible. We're going to have this beauty for a meal soon. Maybe I'll share photos of what we did with it.