Hailey walks through every step you'll need to follow in order to plant, grow, and care for turnips.

Traditionally, turnips haven’t been the most elegant or romanticized of garden vegetables. But in foodie and gardener circles, turnips are finally enjoying a stylish comeback. New cultivars with delicious flavors and textures, coupled with an impressive nutritional profile, are redeeming qualities for this humble root.

Grown and eaten for at least the last 4,000 years, turnips are a root vegetable closely related to radishes and cabbage. They have been grown for both livestock feed and human consumption. For some, turnips seem to insight memories of their grandmother’s mashed or boiled turnip dishes. For others, modern turnips are a culinary delicacy so crisp, sweet, and tender that they can be enjoyed as a snack straight from the garden.

These brassica-family roots are easy to grow and tolerant of spring or fall frosts. While most people are only familiar with the strong-flavored, purple-topped winter turnip, there are in fact dozens of varieties of turnips that give even the tastiest radish or sweetest apple a run for their money. From buttery white ‘Tokyo’ turnips to mild fuchsia salad turnips, there is a vast array of untapped potential for garden-fresh meals.

If you’ve been wanting to try a new spring or fall crop in your garden, turnips are the perfect root for beginners. They are easy to grow, quick to mature, and far more delicious than their reputation may have led you to believe. Let’s dig into how to grow the tastiest turnips you’ve ever tried!
History and Cultivation

Humans have been cultivating turnips since ancient Roman times. In fact, they are one of the oldest known vegetables. But the humble root was not very highly regarded by upper class Europeans for many centuries. Historically, only the rural country peasants ate turnips, or they were fed to cows and pigs during the winter months.

Ironically, the qualities that made turnips important to these populations of country folk are in fact what make this vegetable such an excellent addition to the garden. Turnips could withstand cold, damp winters and hold for a long time in storage. They were easy to grow and yielded prolifically without much fertility or tending. The roots and greens are also nutrient-dense and widely adapted to a diversity of uses in the kitchen.

While turnips were reserved for the rural poor in Europe, they became highly regarded in Asia as a delicate, nearly fruit-flavored snack. Today, specialty varieties of salad turnips (specifically the Asian types) are all the rage amongst locavore chefs and “foodie” circles throughout America.

What Are Turnips?
Turnips (Brassica rapa) are a hardy cool-weather, biennial root crop in the Brassicaceae family. They are closely related to mustards, radishes, broccoli, cabbage, and kale. Turnips are mostly grown in spring or fall. They can be as sweet as carrots or as starchy as potatoes. The greens are also edible and loaded with nutrition. Best of all, turnips thrive in gardens in almost any region.

Turnip plants send most of their energy down to their roots to yield the healthy, fibrous, carbohydrate-rich bulbs loved by ancient farmers. But the bulbous rounded base of the turnip is botanically considered a swollen hypocotyl (not technically root tissue). This is basically an edible storage organ of the plant that is a medley of root, stem, and tuber.

All scientific jargon aside, turnips look a lot like their radish cousins. They average 2-4” in diameter with mustard-like greens that can grow up to 18” tall. Turnips have a more mild, unique flavor than radishes and take longer to mature. However, both radishes and turnips are cultivated in a similar way.

As I’ll explain below, there are many shapes, textures, and colors of turnips, each with their own unique flavor profiles.They can be globe-shaped, elongated, or flat and long. They can be tender and crisp for raw eating or firm and crunchy for winter roasts. The skins can be purple, red, green, white, or mottled. And turnips range in flavor from mild to pungent to slightly bitter to spicy and even sweet. Needless to say, you can’t judge a turnip by its cover!

Where Do Turnips Originate?
Turnips likely originated in temperate parts of central Asia and western Europe. Wild forms of Brassica rapa (wild mustards, wild radishes, and cousins) are also the common ancestors of modern radish, mustard, rutabaga, and Chinese cabbage. The ancient Romans and Greeks both cultivated turnips in some form, though they were mostly reserved for rural peasants or for use as livestock fodder.

As agriculture evolved, turnips spread far and wide throughout the Mediterranean to Asia and beyond. Turnips are so easy to grow that they readily adapted to most every region farmers tried to grow them.

Turnips made their way to the Americas in the late 1500s and early 1600s when explorer Jacques Cartier brought them to Canada and Virginia colonists planted them around the same time in Virginia. Settlers quickly realized how dependable the humble turnip was amidst brutally cold winters when they really needed storage vegetables.

Turnips vs. Rutabagas
While they share a common ancestor, there is a lot of confusion about the difference between turnips and rutabagas. Turnip (Brassica Rapa) is a different species than rutabaga (Brassica napobrassica), but similar in both culture and cooking uses.

Turnips mature faster and have thinner skins than their waxy rutabaga cousins. While turnips are usually harvested at 2-4” in diameter, rutabagas tend to be harvested at 4-6” and need to be cooked a bit longer due to their tougher texture.

Rutabagas are often called “suedes” or “swedes” in Europe and Canada. This European “swede” (the same as the American rutabaga) was developed by crossing a cabbage and a turnip. Swedes remain very popular in England, Sweden, and Scandinavia to this day. Whether you prefer turnips or swedes, both species are grown and cooked in very similar ways. They can even be used interchangeably in many recipes.

Propagation and Planting
Like most brassicas, turnips are propagated by seed and easy to sow. Seeds tend to be on the larger size of mustard-seed, making them great for beginners. They germinate rapidly in 7-10 days and grow fast in consistently moist soil.

Turnips are usually directly sown in the garden because their roots don’t particularly like disturbance. They are also moderately frost tolerant even as seedlings in the spring garden. However, if you prefer, they can be transplanted. But I’ve found that transplanting turnips or radishes just adds another unnecessary step. They like to grow in place.

How to Direct Seed Turnips
Turnips can be seeded in the spring approximately 2 to 3 weeks before your region’s last frost date. They can be sown in succession every few weeks for a continuous harvest through spring. In warmer climates, turnips usually have a harder time growing in the hottest months of June through August. For a fall harvest, you can begin seeding turnips again in late summer or early autumn.

First, prepare a fertile well-drained garden bed with a thin loamy surface layer. Rake it flat and then use the handle of a garden tool to draw furrows in the soil about ½” deep with rows 12-18” apart. Sprinkle the turnip seeds about 1” apart for smaller turnips or 2” apart for larger turnips. You can always thin later if needed.

Keep the seeds consistently moist until germination. I prefer to cover with a light floating row cover directly after seeding to keep the turnips safe from insects and hold in that moisture. For more tender turnips, use overhead or drip irrigation to keep seedlings consistently hydrated. Don’t let the soil dry out, but never let it get soggy either.

How to Grow Turnips
Turnips are a beginner gardener’s dream. When it comes to ease of care and quick maturity (fast gratification anyone?), they are only beaten by their radish cousins in growing speed. On average, turnips take 30-50 days to mature, depending on how big you’d like them to grow.

They are super easy to care for and not very finicky about their growing conditions. With a few simple steps, your turnips will take off in no time and you’ll be enjoying their nutritious roots and greens before you know it!
Maintenance
These roots are notoriously easygoing and hands-off once they are planted and irrigated. The only important maintenance you will need to do is thinning. To yield nicely sized bulbs, be sure that turnip seedlings are at least 1-2” apart. The more even your seeding and thinning, the more uniform your turnips will be for preparing in the kitchen.