Root vegetable lovers unite!

A Swiss chard supporter in the hotly contested One Seed Chicago election has posted a very funny challenge to the candidacy of eggplant.

She's right about eggplant -- too fussy -- but I stick by my radishes. Radishes are easier. Diane of The Garden of Live Flowers grew them successfully in her first gardening season.

No matter how little space you have you can grow radishes. My friend Mike Nowak is trying to drum up support for chard, but that's because he has a house, with a garden. Sure, he has space for chard. But what about the rest of us? What about the container gardeners? What about the little people?

I attribute all this opposition to prejudice and bigotry against radishes on the part of people who suspect, without even knowing them, that they are going to be too strong-flavored. If they knew any real home-grown radishes they would know how wrong they are.

Of course there are also a lot of people who are likely to be prejudiced against Swiss chard because it's green. But that's a general anti-vegetable prejudice. It's not anti-red-root-vegetable prejudice. It doesn't count.

All the red root vegetable people -- no, not the potato people. Those are tubers, not roots. Just the real red root vegetable people. Never mind that some radishes are white and some are purple -- need to unite behind a single candidate to avoid splitting the red root vegetable vote. Oh, wait, we did.

I guess all that's left to do is to actually vote for radishes. Go #teamradish!

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

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