Ready to Rock a Fall Garden?
How to Plant Turnips
Many gardeners love to grow turnip roots in their garden.
Like any root vegetable, turnips do well along with carrots and radishes. They
are easy and can be planted either in the spring, so you have turnips all
summer, or in the late summer for a fall crop. Let’s look at how to grow
turnips.
If you are planting a summer crop, you want to plant the
turnips early. If you are planting so you can have turnips to store throughout
the winter, then plant them late in the summer so they can be harvested before
first frost.
Preparing the bed to grow turnip plants in is easy. Just
rake it and hoe it as usual for planting. Once you are done and the dirt is not
too wet, sprinkle the seeds and rake them in. Growing turnips should be done
with seeds in the soil about half an inch deep at a rate of 10 to 20 seeds per
foot. To start the turnips growing faster, you can water the garden after
planting to speed germination.
Once you find your turnips growing, you should thin the
growing turnips to about 4 inches apart to give the plants plenty of room to
form good roots. This will help the plants to produce a better turnip.
When planting turnips, you want to plant them at ten-day
intervals. This will allow you to grow turnips for harvesting every couple of
weeks throughout the season.
Harvesting Turnips
Come summertime, about 45 to 50 days after planting, you can
pull a turnip up and see if it’s ready for harvest. You can start harvesting
turnips once you find a mature turnip.
If you have summer turnips, they are tenderer. Growing
turnips to produce in late fall produces a hardier variety that stores well in
the drawer in the refrigerator or a cool, dry place. You can then use them
throughout the winter.
Having a vegetable crop you can actually use throughout the
winter is a nice thing when you have a garden. Harvesting turnips can make a
great root cellar vegetable for storing along with carrots, rutabagas and
beets.