by Margie Siegal
Root crops are not that exciting – no one I know ever gushes about heirloom rutabagas – but they have a lot going for them. While vine ripe tomatoes are only around for two to three months out of the year, in our climate, you can grow beets, carrots and parsnips from January through December. These vegetables don’t take up much space and deliver a lot of flavor and food value per square foot of garden area.
Carrot Image by ShireShy from Pixabay
BEETS
Beets are one of the few root crops that can be started inside on a sunny window – a good way to get seedlings going if it is pouring rain or we are going through our annual heat wave. If you buy beet seed, you can choose from a rainbow of colors, from pure white (Avalanche) to red and pink zoned roots with dark magenta tops (Bulls Blood). Yellow beets won’t stain your tablecloth and are the star ingredient in gourmet salads with arugula and goat cheese.
If you are sowing inside in previously used seed starting trays or little plastic pots, wash out the pots in water with a little bleach added and let dry in the sun. Fill with new potting soil – not garden soil, which has a lot of bugs who want to eat your seedlings. Plant 2-3 seeds a half inch deep, put your pots in a sunny window or under grow lights and keep the soil moist (like a wrung out sponge) but not soggy. Plant outside when the starters are about three inches tall.
If you are starting outside, sow 15 seeds per foot, and keep the soil damp (much easier in winter or early spring). After the seedlings come up and are well established, thin to four or five inches apart. The tops of thinnings can go into your salad, so you might want to let the beets grow until you are in a salad mood. Let them grow a little more, and you get baby beets for pickling.
Mature beet tops make great braised greens. Saute an onion, wash your beet tops well (they tend to collect sand) slice them crosswise and add to the pot with the onion. Water should be clinging to the leaves. Cover the pot and turn the heat down. Stir every once in a while. Season with lemon pepper and salt. Beet tops are tender and cook fairly quickly, so check on them every five minutes. Beet greens have a surprising amount of incomplete protein. The missing amino acids can be supplied by cheese or mushrooms.
CARROTS
Carrots you grow are tenderer and tastier than carrots you buy, since store bought carrots have to be sturdy to withstand being machine picked. Carrots come in an even wilder variety of colors than beets. There are purple carrots with bright orange interiors (Dragon, Purple Elite) bright red carrots (Nutri-Red, Red Samurai) yellow carrots (Yellowstone, Gold Nugget) and white carrots (Snow Man, White Satin).
Carrots like loose soil with a lot of organic matter. Our Alameda sand is great for carrots if it is heavily amended with compost and chicken manure. Dig everything in well before you plant.
The challenge with carrots in our climate is to get them started. Carrots like soil temperature between 60-80 degrees and even moisture. Unless it is actively raining (in which case it is probably colder than carrots like) the top of the soil dries out in a hurry, and your carrots will not sprout.
I have found the solution is to water the soil well, put the row of carrot seed on top of the soil, cover (no more than a quarter inch deep!) with potting soil, cover the carrot rows with a couple of layers of newspaper and soak the newspaper. The newspaper keeps the soil moist and warms it up a couple of degrees. Hold the newspaper down with stones or pieces of broken pots. Water the newspaper if it looks like it is drying out, and check underneath every day after a week has passed. When you see little seedlings, take off the newspaper and cover the row with chicken wire to discourage hungry birds.
Young carrot tops are edible, so put the tops of thinnings in your salad along with the beets. Keep the seedlings well watered until they are several inches tall, then you can cut back on the watering can.
If you grow several colors of carrots, you can cook them together to produce an interestingly multicolored dish, but be forewarned- the coloring in purple carrots tends to spread, so cook them separately and combine just before serving.
PARSNIPS
Parsnips are an old fashioned vegetable that are great roasted with a sprinkling of chopped parsley. They are also nutritious. A half cup of cooked parsnips provides 17% of your recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C and 11% of the RDA for folate. They are high in fiber and low in sodium. Steve Solomon, a well known gardening writer, likes parsnips and spends several pages in ‘Gardening When It Counts’ discussing parsnip culture. He says to spade the ground thoroughly to fluff up the soil, sow seed thickly and cover with compost instead of soil. Parsnips like cooler soil – optimum germination is between 55 and 75 degrees soil temperature. Like carrots, parsnips won’t germinate if the soil dries out, so use the same newspaper trick. Solomon suggests putting light boards over the row instead of newspaper.
Parsnips also take a while to grow – between 105 and 120 days, according to Johnny’s seed catalog. I am growing parsnips this year and waited to thin them out until the tops were several inches tall. I got baby parsnips that were really good steamed. I do not think the tops are edible. In fact, some people are allergic to a substance the tops give off on hot, sunny days. Avoid working with this crop on hot afternoons, wear gloves and a long sleeved shirt. There is no record of reactions to the roots.
Beets, carrots and parsnips are stars in what I think of as “farm cuisine:” imaginative use of inexpensive and easily come by ingredients resulting in a gourmet treat on the table. If you grow your own, these versatile vegetables are always available, right by your back door.