Published: May 10, 2022 Last Updated: November 15, 2024
Growing vegetables is considered a task that could be quite burdensome sometimes. But growing root vegetables isn’t as hard as you may think. Root vegetables can give you the joy of gardening, like a treasure just found. You’ll never know how great is the reward until the day of harvest.
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What are root vegetables?
As beginner gardeners and up knows, a root vegetable is a plant with a hearty tuber or bulb that grows underneath the ground. The tuber or bulb stores nutrients from the soil and sugar from the sun through their leaves. This allows tubers and bulb beneath the soil to grow big. Unlike other vegetables, which you can enjoy the beauty as it grows, all your work is beneath the surface, which means it’s an unpredictable reward until you harvest it. Some root vegetables leaves and tops are edible, so you can eat them while you’re waiting for those massive tubers.
How To Grow Root vegetables
There are both hardy and non-hardy root vegetables. The non-hardy root vegetables make great winter store crops. One key thing in common is that they need loose and well-drain soil. You can plant root vegetables in mid-summer, to late summer for a fantastic fall harvest. Root vegetables need plenty of spacing in between each other to allow mature size tubers or bulbs.
1. Radish
With a crunchy crisp texture, and a light spicy taste, radish makes a great addition in spring salads. They can be grown in such tiny spaces, 12 per square foot, which makes them great for small space gardening. Radish is an extremely quick vegetable that you will pull out of the ground. Most varieties of radish are ready to harvest in under 30 days. Some may take longer.
Radishes are quite hardy and have to be planted during the cool seasons of the year to prevent them from bolting. Once they start to bolt, it will become practically useless, unless you’re going to save seeds from them. Radish leaves are edible and can be eaten in stir-fries. You can grow a variety of radishes some comes in different colours, shapes, and sizes.
2. Carrots
There’s nothing like a crunchy, sweet carrot. They make a perfect snack for when you’re working in the gardenhome garden A designated area around a residential property where individuals cultivate plants, fruits, vegetables, or ornamental plants for personal use. It comprises a farming system that combines physical, social, and economic functions on the area of land around a family home, providing a sustainable source of food and other benefits for the household, extended family, and friends.. The seeds of the carrots can be a challenge as they’re hard to to germinate. But doing it correctly will make it an effortless task. There are a variety of size, shape, and colour that you could choose from.
Depending on the variety you choose to grow, it can take a few months before they are ready to mature. To grow a longer variety, you must have loose soil. If you have hard soil, it will need some work before you can sow carrots. Other than humans, animals enjoy carrots too, and will not wait until they are mature before they’ll start eating, so it’s best to put up a small fence around them. You can also grow them in raised beds too. Carrots are hardy in cool weather and the root gets sweeter as the weather becomes colder.
3. Potatoes
Potatoes are such a versatile root vegetable used in the kitchen. Many homesteaders and gardeners grow potatoes to store over the winter. As this root vegetable is growing you can start eating them. After 2-3 weeks after the flowers have appear, you can start harvesting them. Those first potatoes are called new potatoes. Sometimes you might not see flowers, so around wait around 60 days and you can start eating them. They are no good for long-term storage, but make great potatoes that once cooked are soft and tender.
Foliage and everything else above ground is poisonous. For best results, potatoes must be grown in loose soil, if your native soil is clay or a hard soil; the soil will need to be worked first. An easier option is growing potatoes in bags or in containers or raised beds. They also make a great option for small space gardeners.
4. Jerusalem Artichokes
Jerusalem artichokes takes about 110-150 days from the time they flower until they harvest. This is the invincible plant. IT MUST BE CONTAIN or else IT WILL SPREAD in a few years LIKE WILD FIRE. It goes undefeated, nothing kills it. With the lack of skills before, I am super confident that it will not die. Even though I did not water it regularly, even though I had it exposed to sunlight for long periods, I didn’t kill it. Even when the rabbits came early in the season and nibbled on their shoots, and the worms ate a portion of it the previous winter, IT DID NOT DIE.
They are annual plants that grow in the spring and die in the fall. As long as you keep some Jerusalem artichoke in the ground, they will grow year after year. The root vegetable treasure is calling you outside beneath the surface. The delicious tubers which you didn’t lift a finger to care for the year.
5. Onions
Onions are NOT as difficult as you may think, besides the long wait for the bulbs which many could be impatient. But there’s good news. You can start to the harvest onions greens and use them in their cooking. As you’re growing it, the longer you let the stalk grow, the firmer it will become. Each stalk will be a new ring in the bulb. The more stalks (stems) you have, the bigger the onion will become.
Onions can take a variety of time to grow, depending on when you planted them and how you planted them. Once you see the onion stalk has naturally died back, and no shoots are growing, it’s a sign that it’s time to harvest the onions.
6. Sweet Potatoes
Sweet potatoes can take 6 months to grow, where you will get large nice mature tubers when you’re harvesting them. Unlike potato, you can’t just plant the tuber as it will not produce more tubers. Sweet potatoes grow from cuttings.
You can get sweet potato cuttings in packages at Asian markets, which you can soak in water. The cuttings will start to grow roots in a few weeks. There are other ways you can go about growing sweet potatoes. You can make sweet potato into tasty desserts, roasted them in the oven, and boiled for soups. Sweet potatoes skins are also edible with similar nutrient to the inside tuber and a similar taste.
7. Garlicgarlic Garlic: An onion-like plant (Allium sativum) of southern Europe having a bulb that breaks up into separable cloves with a strong distinctive odor and flavor. Used as a seasoning in a variety of dishes around with world.
Garlic is planted in the fall, once the summer and fall crops are cleared out of the garden. There will be some free space. When choosing cloves to plant, choose the biggest and best heads to ensure a bigger harvest next year. It takes 9 months from the time you plant it until it’s mature. Once a clove is planted, it grows into a bulb of garlic cloves.
The bulbs split because of the winter’s cold. Beds for planting cloves must be covered a thick layer (s) of mulch, straw, leaves or other organic insulating matter. The following year, when spring comes, it grows fresh shoots and will take another 5 months before you can harvest them. Garlic is used all around the world in everyday cooking, making it an important root vegetable in the garden.
8. Cassava
Cassava needs a solid 8 months of a consistent warm weather, or they will not grow well. They need temperatures warmer than zone 8. That’s closer to Florida weather! They grow in large bunches of tubers beneath the soil, harvest cassava from the soil in months 9-12 after planted. Cassava is best grown from cutting rather than from seed. Planting them from cuttings will ensure that you don’t accidentally plant a bitter variety.
Cassava will grow great tubers in all soil conditions, but will perform best in loamy soil. Cut a 1 foot cutting and stick it 1/3 or (4 inches) in the ground. They must be planted at the minimum of 3 feet or 1 full meter apart. They make great in soups and in Caribbean desserts.
9. Turnips
Turnips are easy to care and taste great. Both the roots and greens must be eaten cooked, except while they are young and tender. When they are cooked correctly, they have an amazing earthy flavour. Both the leafy greens and the root vegetable are edible. You can plant turnip in both early spring, all summer long, or late summer for a fall crop.
A brief note * turnips planted in the summer for the fall will be sweeter. Turnips grow to be mature in about 50-65 days. In order to store turnips for the winter you must grow a hardier variety. They make a great root cellar storage winter crop. Turnips thrive at their best, in full sunlight but they can tolerate partial shade.
10. Beets
Our last root vegetable is beet. Beets have a sweet earthy flavour that makes it a great addition to many dishes. Beet greens are also great for salads and juices. Beet greens contain more iron than many other veggies. You can eat beets both raw and cooked. Beets grow well in raised beds and containers, making them a brilliant choice to grow for small spaces.
Baby beets can be harvested at around days 40-50 and for larger mature beets. Harvest the beets at days 65-85. It’s also a cool season crop, great to squeeze in before and after the your summer garden. Beet needs a well-drained soil environment to grow well. Beet grows pretty quick and tastes best when harvested when they are still young.
