Carrots: A Vitamin-rich Snack

My grandson Brian is a real carrot fan. When he sees the feathery carrot tops in the garden he can hardly wait to start pulling up his orange snacks. Kids like discovering buried treasure and I’ve taught Brian how to find the biggest carrots in the row—by looking for the darkest green tops. (Works almost every time.) To get the most of your carrots‘ vitamin A and other minerals, don’t peel them. A good scrubbing with a vegetable brush is all they need.

I try a lot of carrot varieties each year, all lengths and shapes. My friend Ed told me about the Danversvariety which I grow every year. He said it was developed a long time ago in the area around Danvers, Massachusetts. When he was a kid he weeded carrot fields there by hand for a summer job and received $4 a week!

Any variety of carrot can be eaten when it’s as big around as your finger. These fingerlings are great fresh and they are about the only size you can freeze. They stay sweet, but older carrots lose their quality when frozen.

Carrot seeds aren’t the best starters in early spring, so I plant them about 2 weeks after my first sowing of beets and turnips.

You can give carrot seeds a head start with my paper towel seed tapes or by soaking the seed in warm water for a few hours before planting them. Use extra seed because some stick together and are hard to thin.

You also can start them in sprouting jars as you would alfalfa seeds or mung beans, soaking them first, then rinsing them once a day. When the seeds sprout, prepare your seedbed, sprinkle the seeds over the row, and cover normally.

Parsnips: Slow to grow but worth the wait

It’s hard to understand why more gardeners don’t grow parsnips. It’s true, they take a long time to germinate and need a long season to grow, but their delicious flavor makes them well worth the wait. Once you’ve grown and cooked parsnips, you can’t give them up.

A few years ago an 85-year-old neighbor of mine moved to a nearby city to live with his relatives. Unfortunately he didn’t have room to garden there. Before he left, he brought some parsnip seeds to my house and said, “Dick, will you grow some parsnips for me? I’ll have my son drive me out to help you dig them up. I just love ‘em!”

My wife, Jan, is the real parsnip fan in our house. Her chicken soup is not really chicken soup unless it has fresh parsnips cut into it. And have you noticed in the supermarkets that the packages of cut vegetables labeled “Soup Greens” have lots of parsnips in them? Somebody knows what makes soups taste good.

I start parsnips when I start carrots. Once they’re up, which can take 2 weeks or more, I thin them, then let them grow all summer. After a few frosts in the fall I dig up some of the row to use right away. I mulch another part of the row so I’ll be able to dig some during the winter, and I leave the rest of the row alone.

As soon as the ground thaws in the spring, I dig in this last part of the row. The parsnip flavor is best when they are dug and eaten within a day or two. Once the plants start growing, a few weeks later, they start using the energy they’ve stored to send up new growth. As a result the roots get soft and unappetizing.

Radishes: In my garden Cherry Belles pop up everywhere

I rarely grow radishes by themselves. They function so well as a companion crop that I keep a pouch of seeds handy and sprinkle a few in with almost every vegetable, especially other root crops.

You might think “a radish is a radish” but there are many varieties to choose from. The Cherry Belle is my favorite red radish. It’s crisp and flavorful and ready to pick in a few weeks. Root maggots bother it less than other varieties. The white radishes and black radishes grow deep like carrots but they take more time than red ones.

For the tastiest radishes, keep your crop growing quickly. Fertilize the seedbed before planting, and give the plants a steady supply of water.

My most flavorful, crunchiest radishes grow under plastic tunnels early in the spring. The tunnel traps moisture rising from the ground, so the plants never hurt for water. They grow quickly and don’t get woody.

When you plant radishes, plant a lot, but be sure to thin. You’ll have so many radishes growing, you won’t have to wait for big ones before you start eating.

Make a few plantings late in the season with the last one about the time you figure it’s got to be too late. More often than not you’ll get a bonus crop when it’s time to put the garden to bed.

Rutabagas and Turnips: Delightful all-season eating

I think of rutabagas and turnips as twins. They look alike, are grown the same way, and to some folks even taste the same. I think, though, that rutabagas have a slightly milder flavor than turnips, and they keep much better.

I take plenty of big rutabagas to my mountain camp each fall. We get plenty of visitors there— often 12 or more staying for supper—and rutabagas are a staple. I like to boil a lot of them with just a couple of potatoes, mash them, and serve them with salt, pepper, and butter mixed in. The potatoes seem to reduce any bitterness there might be in the rutabagas. This rutabaga dish goes great with spaghetti and tossed salad. (Sometimes my guests don’t realize they’re eating rutabagas, but they love ‘em!)

I don’t grow rutabagas for greens because their stem is thick and tough. Turnip greens taste much better. I plant turnips almost as soon as I can till the soil. I pull most of them for greens. Later I plant more turnips and rutabagas for some good-sized roots to store for the winter.

I pack rutabagas and turnips in large plastic bags, poke a few holes in each bag, and store them in a cold spot in the root cellar. Because rutabagas keep longer than turnips, we eat the turnips first and save the rutabagas for meals in late winter.

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