![]() These nutritious sweet tasting root vegetables are easy to grow, a good crop to sow directly into the garden in autumn. Roasted, they make a tasty lower calorie alternative to potatoes.įast growing turnips are much more than just cattle food. They are an excellent winter staple for soups, roasting or mashing with butter and teaspoon of golden syrup. Ideally sown in late summer or early autumn, swedes are ready to eat 3 to 4 months after sowing, made sweeter by winter cold. Creamy yellow swedes are larger and will store for longer than turnips, which are white. Their young leaves can be cooked like cabbage. Swedes and turnips are part of the brassica family. Parsnips can be left in the ground over winter until you are ready to eat them, but harvest before growth starts in spring, or they ’ll turn woody. Keep thinning until your parsnips are about 15cm apart. The tap roots grow strongly during these early weeks, and you need to give them room to grow. Start thinning when the seedlings have their first two true leaves. In milder climates they can be sown as late as March, provided the seed is not allowed to dry out.īe sure to use fresh seed and sow directly into well-drained and deeply dug soil in a sunny location. In cold climates, parsnip seed is sown in spring for harvesting in autumn or winter. Parsnips take time to grow but are well worth it for their sweet nutty flavour, enhanced after frost which converts the starches into sugars. Discourage carrot rust fly by planting carrots in a different spot each year. Otherwise, sow your last batch of seed 2-3 months before heavy frost. A year-round supply is easy in frost-free climates. Excessive nitrogen will also lead to misshapen and ‘hairy’ carrots.įor a continuous supply sow carrot seed every 3-4 weeks. Otherwise, feed once your carrots are growing Side dress with balanced general garden or liquid fertiliser. Ideally, sow carrots where a well-fed crop (such as lettuces) grew the season before. If you want neat, tapered carrots that are easy to peel, remove lumps of compacted soil and stones. Choose a sunny well drained spot and work the soil so that it is loose and crumbly, easy for the young roots to penetrate. Once you ’ve sampled the earthy sweetness of carrots from your own garden, the shop bought ones may never taste the same.Ĭarrots are best sown directly into their growing place and then thinned as they grow. TIP: Beetroot makes great food colour that ’s far better for kids than artificial food colouring. Some of the seedlings may ‘self-thin’ and grow into big solo beetroot (best for preserving) while the others will grow as a cluster of baby beets (perfect for roasting). To avoid disturbing the roots, carefully snip off the spares with scissors rather than pulling them. If you want to grow full sized beetroots, sacrifice all but one little seedling in each cluster. To thin or not to thin? What look like large single beetroot seeds are actually little clusters of two to four seeds. Some gardeners pre-soak seed in water to assist germination. Plant a small batch every few months for a continuous supply. In warm climates beetroot can be grown all year round. It grows easily from direct sown seed or for extra convenience, seedlings are readily available from garden centres. Or for optimum nutritional value, eat raw grated beetroot, delicious in a burger or salad wrap.īeetroot is easy to grow in a sunny patch of garden soil, or in a large container filled with planting mix. ![]() Caramelised with roasting, it is surprisingly sweet. The roots are very high in natural sugar. Added raw to a salad, young beetroot leaves are loaded with healthy vitamins and minerals. The entire plant, including the leaves, is edible. Beetrootīeetroot comes in a range of interesting shapes and colours, including yellow and striped varieties. Growing a variety of different root vegetables means colourful dinner plates with a good variety of nutrients. We also need high energy root vegetables. Leafy greens are loaded with essential immune-system-boosting vitamins. Then, it’s that drop in temperature that makes our winter vegetables so sweet to eat. The key to successful winter harvests is early autumn planting so young plants can make the most of the soils warmth to get growth well established before winter cold sets in. It’s easy, as a vege gardener, to feel smug in summer when our efforts reward us with so much beautiful food that we can stride straight past the produce shelves in the supermarket.īut if we want to keep the produce coming this is no time to slack! While the cucumber and zucchini plants are still pumping and tomatoes still ripening daily, it’s time to find space for the food crops that will sustain us over the cooler months.
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