Common Little Plant Becomes A Flower Superstar

Spring a year ago, I looked around the farm in April and realized it was dull. We can’t be dull this week. Y’all might be paying attention to the eclipse or the rapture, but here, minutes from downtown Augusta, Georgia, all that has to wait. This is the gold rush for Augusta as millions of super-bougie tourists flood in for golf and gardens.

I needed to tart up this old farm. So, on that drizzly April day last year, I walked. And I looked.

And I found a stunning, easy-to-grow, cheap solution that was right there all along. You know how the old folks say, “If it was a rattler, it’d a bit you.”

Well it’s not a rattler but I’m bit. I’ll never garden without it. Y’all need this too.

Listen, if I were a wedding planner, or a flower show manager, I wouldn’t share this secret.  But I’m just a guy trying to tart up his old farm to impress some of those Masters tourists with a zillion flowers, and get readers on substack who want to learn secret garden tricks.

So here’s what I did:

Can’t you see a bride and groom posing in this? Or an angel floating over that? Tiger Woods in all of his green jackets?

And this little country vignette around the clubhouse. Ok, the outhouse,

Problem is, this flower needs a sexy name. Again, gold, I mean golf tourists are on my mind, so I’m thinking:

Augusta White Wedge Flower

Bogey Blossom

Snowstorm Flower

Easter Cross Flower  

Snow in Spring

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Yuck. I’m bad at that sort of thing. Help me, sales-minded folks because this is a damned sexy flower.  On a sexy scale of 1 to 10, it’s a ten, but its name is a 1. It is known as,

Radish. 

Wait, it gets worse. It’s actually called,

Tillage Radish.

It’s actually a daikon radish, and I suppose that adds some Asian cache to the name, but still, on a 10-point scale, it’s a 3.2 at best.

For gardeners, it’s easy as pie. Buy the seeds in October, scatter them on the ground and wait. I swear some of them even came up where I spilled seeds in the grass. Now that we’ve made the farm spiffy in April, I’m thinking big — I hear they have a famous spot called azalea corner over there. Maybe they’ll hire me to update that and do a radish corner.

As the radish flowers fade, cool, inflated seed pods form. Tangy and delicious, they have a better crunch than a snap pea. They’d be great in flower arrangements, too.

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Do Golfers Go On Farm Tours?

In April, we’re booked up with Lunch and Learn tours. These are private tours for groups. We start with a nursery tour, then have a farm lunch made by our very own chef from across the pasture. Then we do a garden tour and history of the 1750s farm. If you have a group that may be interested in a fall tour, read more.

UPCOMING EDUCATIONAL DAYS

On April 26 and 27, come for a self-guided farm tour (click the date for info)

May 11 Free Farm Open and SC Ag + Art Tour (click the link for info)

May 12 Mother’s Day Lunch Event   (click to buy tickets)

June 8 We are thrilled to host Carol Reese, who’s taken up the reigns to ensure that valid science, not myth or popular lit, drives our native and invasive plants policy. We have very limited seats. ….

Click here to register.