Home Gardeners Get to the Root of Growing Vegetables

Many non-gardeners consider the root vegetables to be rather mundane food items. After all, they are readily available at markets and are usually quite reasonably priced. So why grow your own?

The answer lies in the flavor and the wide selection of unusual and quality varieties that are only available to home gardeners. Many of the root crops found in the supermarket have been in storage for weeks with the resultant loss of flavor and vitamins.

Flavor Doesn’t Count

In addition, most commercial varieties are selected for their shipping and storage characteristics; flavor and quality are only incidental factors.

Root vegetables, including carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, rutabagas and parsnips, have been around for a long time. As human beings progressed from food gatherers to food producers, the root crops have been of major culinary importance; consumed by kings and peasants alike.

The root crops are probably the easier to grow of all vegetables. They are especially good crops for a child’s garden. They are almost guaranteed to grow if given some care and they don’t demand great skill.

Now is the prime time of year to plant root vegetables in Southern California gardens. They flourish in cool weather and their quality is much better when grown during the cool season.

The root vegetables are available in a multitude of interesting varieties. Here are some varieties you might want to sample in your garden.

Carrots--Selecting the correct carrot varieties for your particular garden soil can mean the difference between success and failure in growing carrots. For instance, even some experienced gardeners don’t realize the advantage of choosing a short, plump variety of carrot for planting in heavy soils.

Such a variety can penetrate the soil without losing its shape. If the soil is light, long slender carrots can go deep in search of nutrients. Best of plump types for heavy soil are Oxheart, Royal Chantenay and Burpee’s Short ‘n’ Sweet. The slender varieties for light soils include Imperator, Nantes and Gold Pak. Danvers will produce well in soils ranging from medium-heavy to light and it is probably the most reliable and best producer of all carrot varieties.

Radishes--Radishes come in many sizes and shapes. And they grow fast. Champion is an excellent variety that grows to the diameter of a silver dollar without becoming pithy and hot. White Icicle is a long, slender white radish that is quite mild. French Breakfast is an old favorite, and deservedly so. It’s oblong, red with a white tip and is also mild. Cherry Belle and Scarlet White Tip are very early, reliable varieties and Summer Cross Hybrid is an excellent Oriental radish.

Beets--Red as a beet doesn’t always apply. Burpee’s Golden beet is just what it says, gold in color and sweet. Also, it doesn’t bleed when sliced. Lutz beet is an old-fashioned variety which reaches a huge size; I believe it has the finest flavor of all the beet varieties.

Then there’s Cylindra, which grows to 8 inches in length but is only 1 1/2 inches in diameter. If you like pickled beets, you’ll find this red beet convenient, for most of the slices are uniform in size. Most widely planted of the round beets is Detroit Dark Red. Ruby Queen will produce in areas where other varieties fail.

Each year after we have pickled a goodly number of beets, we freeze the surplus. Just slice and cook the beets, add a sauce made of orange juice thickened with corn starch and seal in a freezer bag with Seal-A-Meal or a similar sealing device.

Turnips--As for turnips, Tokyo Cross Hybrid is one of the finest I have grown. It is early, highly productive, sweet in flavor and will stand in the garden for a long time without bolting to seed. Purple-Top White Globe is the most popular home garden turnip. It has a succulent sweet flavor, but it is much slower to reach maturity than Tokyo Cross. Remember that the tops of beets and turnips are good when cooked as greens.

Parsnips and rutabagas--These two are not as easy to grow as the other root vegetables. They take up more garden space and require a longer growing season than the others. However, if you are a patient gardener, they can be a most rewarding crop. Hollow Crown and All American are two superior parsnip varieties. Good rutabaga varieties include American Purple Top and Marion.

Root crop culture--When you plant root crops, keep in mind that the root is what counts; the soil should be as loose and friable as you can make it. Spade the soil to a depth of at least 1 foot and work in lots of organic materials such as compost and peat moss. Make certain that any manure you add is well-aged. Green manure will cause the root vegetables to split.

If your soil is very hard, you might consider growing root crops in raised beds where you can mix your own soil and fill in over the old soil. Root vegetables are not heavy feeders. At the time you work up the soil, add a multipurpose fertilizer; then you won’t have to add fertilizer later.

You can plant these crops in rows or scatter them in individual plots. Don’t try to transplant them; that will cause misshapen roots. Follow the directions on the seed packet carefully. If you plant them in rows, put in several short rows at two-week intervals rather than one planting of a long row. You don’t want to have dozens of radishes maturing at the same time. But carrots and rutabagas are an exception. You can leave them in the ground after they mature, using them as you need them.

By the way, radishes mature so quickly that I like to interplant them with other vegetables. That way, they’re up and gone before they get in the way of other crops, and you don’t have to allocate a special plot for them.

In the absence of rain, weekly watering is necessary.