Turnips

[PatrickW]

Does anyone have any favorite turnips?

I think turnips are very under-rated, and what you grow is so much better than what you can buy. They often aren't worth eating unless you grow them yourselves.

I often grow the purple top ones, because seeds are easy to come by and they are reliable. Turnip greens are very popular here, and a favorite of mine. I usually buy these, and I don't know what variety is grown locally.

I've also grown orange jelly turnips, which have both nice roots and greens. Most varieties are single purpose.

Anyone have any good recipes? One of my favorites is this:

www.soupsong.com/rturnip1.html

Søren has made some blog posts about turnips he's tried in the past:

toads.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/seeds-from-siberia/

toads.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/turnips-for-seed-stored-for-the-winter/

[mnjrutherford]

I like turnips though I haven't really grown any here yet. I'm hoping to do this coming year however.

My issue at the moment is that I would expect to plant them in the fall with the fall bug flush. I did this 2 years ago and the plants were just wall to wall larvae by the first frost and so gross that I yanked them all up and dumped them into soapy water.

I have some carrots planted at the moment, in the middle of the onions and garlic. I'm thinking I should have planted the turnips a bit later, closer to the first frost and deep mulched them?

Got any thoughts on sugar beets by the way?

[PatrickW]

It does sound like you planted them too early.

Turnips are generally very fast growing, maturing in as little as 60 days. At the same time, they are very frost hardy, but in cold weather grow more slowly. We have a similar climate here to yours, but a bit shorter I think. I usually plant mine in September or so, with the first harvest in November/December, and continue to harvest them slowly over the winter and early spring.

The old sugar beets were usually the white ones, albina verduna or something similar (maybe Detroit white?). Modern sugar beets are not heirloom, but are good if what you want to do is extract syrup from them. I understand making actual sugar is harder than you might think,

A better alternative to sugar beets, if what you want is sugar, might be sorghum?

[mjc]

I grew Seven Top and Purple Top this year.

Seven Top is a 'greens' turnip...the roots are small, hard and woody.

The purple top greens are edible, but the Seven Top were better.

This year, I'm planning on adding the Orange Jelly and Ohno Scarlets to the mix. Both are more a root type than a greens type.

I grew them both in the spring and as a fall crop. My spring crop did better over all, but the fall grown Purple Tops had better flavored roots...it may have been because instead of finishing up as it was getting hot, which will, like radishes make the roots harder and change the flavor, they were finishing up as it cooled off and those roots seemed milder and sweeter. Seven Top was fine either way. The spring crop has fewer bugs and larger roots.

Sugar beets...I've grown them in the past to use as fodder. The greens are edible, like any other beet/chard and used the same, but we fed them to the critters, greens and all. If planted early enough and let grow all season, they will get rather large (a few pounds each). As to processing them...I haven't tried it yet.

[bunkie]

we planted the purple top early this spring. they germinated fast and the plants grew huge but bolted very quickly. we left them and they reseeded come fall and we were able to harvest just a few nice bulbs. i'm thinking of maybe starting a few off in paper pots this spring to see if we get a better ealy harvest. if plaanted in fall, do they have to get to a certain size to make it through the winter? can we maybe plant seeds in the fall and harvest in the spring?

we're going to try 'Blanc de Crossy' this spring, too.

patrick, those varieties of toad's look really interesting. does he have a variety that is a red turnip, through and through? i saw one in Johnny's catalog, but it's a hybrid.

[Alan]

I tend to prefer the improved purple top whit globe, but only because it is so well adapted to my climate and is an efficient, well known, and fairly productive market crop.


That said, the past two years I've been genepooling as many turnips as I can get ahold of that are of high quality and crossing them (I do this with radish too) and I have built a market for these. Problem is I never have found a way to proficiently produce enough seed from them or else they would be on the seed list already and there are some real winners in there.

Seed wise they have some priority this season, we need more development and improvement in small seed crops more than anything else I think.

[paquebot]

I've grown Eastham/Macomber turnips the past 3 years. Hard to tell them from a rutabaga when growing and get equally big or bigger. Until one tastes them, one would think that they are just a white-fleshed rutabaga. Taste is sharp, almost like a radish.

Martin

[flowerpower]

I'm looking foward to growing the Eastham this yr. Thanks, Martin.

I always grow the purple top rutabaga. I get a much better crop in the fall.

[PatrickW]

Bunkie: Baker Creek is offering a red OP turnip, but I don't know anything about it.

As far as size goes, in my climate at least I don't find this important for surviving the winter. When I start harvesting, I just begin with the largest roots. As winter goes on, the smaller ones slowly grow, and I harvest them too. By spring there are always a few small ones that didn't grow for whatever reason, and those I just discard.

Martin: the Eastham/Macomber sound interesting. Ugh, how I hate rutabagas though! You would think they are somehow related, and should taste the same as turnips, but they are not for me!

Alan: I like the idea of trying to select for new turnips, but it seems like it would be really difficult. Greens, okay, you can cut some away, taste them and the plant will keep growing. The roots on the other hand would be harder. You could cut off a piece of the root, but it's hard to know if it's woody with just a small piece, and I would only be sure of the taste after I cooked it. Even then, because the plants need such a large gene pool, you would probably still end up crossing a large number of different plants for the next generation. I think before you start, you need a pretty clear vision of what you are going after... I'll be interested in hearing more about your thoughts and experiences.

[paquebot]

With the Eastham, there's often been a tale of it having originated as a cross between a radish and a rutabaga. Supposedly that can't happen but they may be close enough that it did happen that way. I have about 2 ounces of seed on hand.

Martin

[Alan]

Jan 5, 2010 5:07:00 GMT -5 PatrickW said:

Bunkie: Baker Creek is offering a red OP turnip, but I don't know anything about it.

As far as size goes, in my climate at least I don't find this important for surviving the winter. When I start harvesting, I just begin with the largest roots. As winter goes on, the smaller ones slowly grow, and I harvest them too. By spring there are always a few small ones that didn't grow for whatever reason, and those I just discard.

Martin: the Eastham/Macomber sound interesting. Ugh, how I hate rutabagas though! You would think they are somehow related, and should taste the same as turnips, but they are not for me!

Alan: I like the idea of trying to select for new turnips, but it seems like it would be really difficult. Greens, okay, you can cut some away, taste them and the plant will keep growing. The roots on the other hand would be harder. You could cut off a piece of the root, but it's hard to know if it's woody with just a small piece, and I would only be sure of the taste after I cooked it. Even then, because the plants need such a large gene pool, you would probably still end up crossing a large number of different plants for the next generation. I think before you start, you need a pretty clear vision of what you are going after... I'll be interested in hearing more about your thoughts and experiences.

Patrick, a little trick I learned from Alan Kapuler is that the turnips will actually grow back from nothing more than just the crown of the plant, so as you make crosses and evaluate them as feed/seed crops you can taste the roots, up to 80% of the root even, plant it back and still get a seed crop. My goal is essentially a "grex", a true breeding multi-diverse turnip in multiple colors for greens and roots, it's not as hard as it sounds, just have to mulch with straw to overwinter them here in Southern Indiana.

[johno]

I've only grown a few types. I found that the purple top turnips provide better greens than Seven Top for me - found that humorous... I'd like to help in this trial, but I don't have any turnip seed right now. We mostly eat the greens around here, but I'd definitely like to find nice mild roots.

[canadamike]

Yellow fleshed like Golden jelly have my favor. Up here, they are a much better fall crop than anything else, and GJelly keeps very very well in winter, much like a rutabaga. I am growing a long carrot kind of shaped one this year, a french turnip with a black skin, ''Noir Long de Pardailhan''

Said to be delicious and tasting like hazelnut and pinion. In its southern France point of origin, they cook it in geese fat with a little sugar until it is caramelized...

We will see

[PatrickW]

Martin: Do you know if the Eastham is B. napus or B. rapa? Do you know of crosses being done with is? Anyway, I'm interested in seed. I'm going to send you an email.

Mike: Sounds great! Let us know how it goes.

Alan: You make it sound very easy. My summer garden is pretty full at the moment, but I still have winter garden space. If you're interested, I could try to make some selections. I don't want to take your last bit of seed however. In any case, we have months to chat about it if you're interested.

[mjc]

Jan 5, 2010 23:23:46 GMT -5 Alan said:

Patrick, a little trick I learned from Alan Kapuler is that the turnips will actually grow back from nothing more than just the crown of the plant, so as you make crosses and evaluate them as feed/seed crops you can taste the roots, up to 80% of the root even, plant it back and still get a seed crop. My goal is essentially a "grex", a true breeding multi-diverse turnip in multiple colors for greens and roots, it's not as hard as it sounds, just have to mulch with straw to overwinter them here in Southern Indiana.

That trick works for a number of root crops. The one I've used it on before was onions, except with them you use the root end. Carrots also will do it. And well chicory...just about any piece of root will work (I wonder if it would for the leaf types like raddichio...). Radishes, parsnips, rutas...all should work.

Probably all the biennial root crops will to some extent regrow from just a portion of the root. I guess the trick would be knowing which end to use (for most of them, I imagine it would be the top/leaf end).