Turnips are good for any yard, and you must use companion planting to help them develop even greater. Permaculture Evaluation Institute describes companion planting as “A gardening approach which makes use of the synergistic properties current in nature: cooperation between crops to achieve optimum nicely being and viability.”
Companion planting brings long-term soil stability, harmony, shade, and selection to the homestead yard. Companion crops present shade and shelter, repel crop-destroying insect pests, and enhance yard soil with necessary nutritional vitamins.
Furthermore, companion crops improve the flavour of shut by greens, enchantment to helpful pollinators, in the reduction of the need for chemical-based herbicides and pesticides, and helps retain soil moisture.
Turnips Are Terrific Companions
Turnips are pure aphid repellents, defending all types of yard crops which might be weak to aphid invasion. Squash, tomatoes, celery, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, beans, onions, garlic, lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach, cauliflower, and radishes all flourish when planted interspersed with turnips.
Turnips are “most interesting buddies” with nitrogen-fixing peas. Plant turnips throughout the bottom of helps or trellises for sweet peas and pole beans.
To keep up rabbits, deer, rodents, and bugs from nibbling on tender turnip leaves, plant turnips near strongly scented herbs harking back to rosemary, basil, thyme, horehound, borage, hyssop, lavender, and all sorts of mint.
Whereas mint is doubtless probably the greatest herbs to repel plant predators, it could be invasive and is most interesting potted in containers to cease it working rampant by the yard.
When planting, take into consideration surrounding the turnip patch with vetch, which boosts the soil with necessary minerals and helps administration frequent weeds.
Contemplate companion planting is not an precise science, nonetheless barely one which’s developed by trial and error. When establishing a rural or metropolis homestead yard, it is helpful to make discover of the best way you group crops inside the yard and which ones had been most helpful to 1 one other. Do not plant turnips near completely different root crops harking back to parsnips, carrots, potatoes, or beets on account of they compete for the same nutritional vitamins inside the soil.
All About Turnips
A cool-weather biennial cultivated as an annual, the turnip (Brassica rapa subsp. rapa) presents daring inexperienced leaves and a white-skinned, bulbous taproot or tuber. The whole turnip plant is edible. The turnip is a extraordinarily nutritious vegetable experiencing new recognition with homestead gardeners.
The plant is each grown as a root vegetable or for the flavorful and intensely nutritious inexperienced leaves. Little one turnips, the turnips which have however to develop their brightly colored tops, look significantly like a giant, white spring radish. Little one Bunch turnips are a variety that is harvested and cherished once they’re solely regarding the measurement of marbles.
There are many distinctive sorts of turnip presenting a numerous palette of shade and magnificence. Favorite varieties embrace white, pink, and purple prime turnips. Turnips are labeled by kind: flat-bottomed, globular, or elongated. The most typical type of turnip is the European type acknowledged for its company white flesh and violet-tinged prime. Have you learnt that there are larger than fifty completely various kinds of turnips?
Turnip roots is also boiled, steamed, stewed, roasted, deep-fried, pickled, or served raw. Attempt turnips mashed half and half with new potatoes and a generous dollop of butter. Grated or diced, raw turnips may even add style and crunch to sandwiches and salads.
Turnip greens are served flippantly steamed or chopped current in salads and salsa. The tender youthful greens add a sweet and spicy wallop of mouth-watering style.
Together with A Turnip Patch
Fast-growing turnips develop successfully in all parts of the USA. Turnips, on account of they’re root greens, often should not damaged by a numerous array of bugs that assault above soil vegetation.
Purdue Faculty Extension Service notes, “Turnip is a cool-weather crop and successfully tailor-made for the northern parts of the USA and Europe and for Good Britain and Canada. Nonetheless, truck-growing areas of the South moreover produce turnip roots and greens in all seasons for human consumption.”
Rising Info
Turnips are humble tubers which might be easy to develop. Turnips thrive in a full-sun location with well-drained, nutrient-rich soil. Expert turnip growers suggest amending the soil sooner than planting with generous portions of well-aged herbivore (cow, horse, goat, sheep) manure. Work the soil successfully, incorporating manure whereas eradicating rocks and roots.
Turnip rising consultants advise, “Stay away from using current manure. Turnips often should not very keen on this on account of it brings up the nitrogen content material materials of the soil making the roots type too strong.”
- Turnips do most interesting in yard soil with a pH of 5.5 to 6.8. The pH diploma of yard soil might be checked with a pH check out gear obtainable on-line or from native yard services. You can also take a soil sample to your county extension office for testing. Amend pH ranges as advisable.
- Work the soil successfully sooner than planting. The texture must be mealy, moist, and crumbly. An addition of pure, well-aged compost improves nutrient content material materials and texture of the soil to ensure a bountiful harvest.
- Plant turnip seeds instantly inside the yard 3-4 weeks sooner than the ultimate frost of spring. As quickly because the soil warms to not lower than 40 ranges Fahrenheit, seed germination occurs in each week to 10 days. A fall planting of turnips often provides a sweeter and longer harvest. For a fall harvest, sow seeds in mid-summer, not lower than two months sooner than the first frost.
Determining Turnip Varieties
Planting Turnips
Plant turnip seeds in even rows spaced 18 to 24 inches apart. Cowl seeds with a couple of half-inch of soil. As seedlings develop, skinny crops to about 4 inches apart. When seedlings are well-established and about six inches tall, apply a heavy layer of pure mulch to the soil ground to retain moisture and administration weeds.
For the sweetest and most flavorful turnips, maintain the soil uniformly moist. Do not allow the soil to dry out. Turnips require not lower than one inch of water per week. Make sure the soil is well-drained. If the soil is soggy with standing water, turnip roots will rot. Be affected individual, turnips require 50 to 60 days to attain maturity.
Turnip Harvest And Storage
Harvest by digging or pulling. Current, tender leaves might be trimmed off the plant at any time. Prep, put together dinner, and season turnip greens as you’d current spinach.
Turnip tubers will retailer inside the fridge crisper for as a lot as six weeks, or you’ll retailer turnips as you’d beets or potatoes in a root cellar for winter consumption.
TurnipRecipes.co.uk offers a treasure chest of turnip recipes, along with my favorite recipe for turnip wine.
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