My first radish

This is a photo of my first radish that I grew from a seed all by myself.

At my school we had to do a passion project. I love doing the passion project, it's easy to do when you love what you are doing. It's not really like doing work, you are doing it already and it's fun to share what you are passionate about with others. I love cooking and gardening, especially cooking what I have grown.

Here are all the photos of me growing a radish and others things like beetroot, herbs, carrots, pansies and lettuce.

I planted one seed into each section of an egg carton and I made sure they were not too deep. I kept them warm and moist in a cute little green house I bought from IKEA. After about 5 days my seeds started to shoot up and by day 7 they looked like this ...

 I noticed that the first two leaves were round love heart shaped but then after that they were spiky and pointed. I discovered that when you grow your own radishes not all of them grow round like you see in the shops, some of them grow long and skinny or even pointy.

Then I planted my seedlings out in my garden. My Nanna & Poppa helped me make a garden bed and plant lots of other seedlings. I think growing radishes is a great thing to start with because they are easy to grow.

This is my little sister Olive looking for Easter eggs. You can see my rows of radishes to the right and in the middle before I picked them!

I watered my radishes twice on hot summer days, once on a normal day and not on rainy days. I also put straw, compost manure and fertilizer down. The straw helps keep the soil moist by preventing evaporation. I made sure my soil was the right type for my radishes too. They like peaty soil. But I left some of the soil sandy for the carrots.

These are my beetroots, I can't wait to roast them!

This is my baby basil and dill. You can't see the garlic chives and coriander ... my dad gets stuck into these for our salad and fish for dinner!

This is my Mum's salad with my radishes on top, we also ate them with cheese on oat bread.

Here are my top 10 tips for growing you own food
1. Find a plot in your garden or even in a pot that has plenty of sunshine.
2. Rake out your plot and make sure there is no plastic & big rocks.
3. You will need a couple of basic tools: watering can, spade, trowel, hoe & fork
4. Find out what soil you have, it is probably going to be either Sandy, Clay or Peaty.
5. Find out what vegetables you can grown in your area and in the right season.
6. Choose to grow them from seeds or buy seedlings, it might be easier from seedlings but not as much fun to watch the seeds sprout up and it's more economical.
7. Make sure you feed your vegetables with the right fertilizers, and lay down some straw.
8. Read about your plants on the seed packet or label to check how much sun & water they need and when you can expect to harvest them.
9. You might want to use a little bit of snail bate especially if you are growing lettuce.
10. Sometimes what you plant might not work out, it might die. That's ok, try again or try something different and see if you can learn from what might have gone wrong.