Root Crops in September

Root Crops to Plant in Central Virginia in September

In September the days get shorter and we get our last chance to plant crops to feed us during the winter. Much more of our garden time will be spent harvesting this month!

In early September we can direct sow several root crops.

• Daikon and other winter radish (in very early September);
• Turnips (by 9/15);
• Kohlrabi only takes 60 days from sowing to harvest. They can be direct sown or transplanted from flats or an outdoor nursery seedbed at the beginning of September. Kohlrabi is hardy to about 15°F (-9.4°C). Our night temperatures will be higher than that until the beginning of November;
• Small radishes by mid-September. We usually squeeze these in on the south shoulder of a bed of kale, because they grow quickly and we don’t need a whole bedful. By the time the kale needs the space, the radishes will be gone.
• In the hoophouse, we start our winter crops by sowing radishes and leafy greens on 9/6 or 9/7.

See Root Crops in August for more details on these.

It’s too late for any slow-growing crops like carrots. We can just squeeze in some beets at the beginning of September, if we take good care of them. Hoeing, weeding and thinning at the first opportunity will help them grow a bit faster and make up for lost time. We could cover them with rowcover to warm their airspace and soil, once we have got them established and tidied up. I hate to cover weedy crops with rowcover – you just know it encourages weeds to grow faster! Beets won’t die of cold until 12F for my favorite, Cylindra, so they have quite a while yet. See Root Crops in August for more about fall beets.

Radish succession crops

In our winter hoophouse, we sow radishes six or seven times. It is a science and an art to time the sowings to provide a succession of delectable little radishes with no gaps in supply and no overlap of plantings and gnarly big roots. I have made a graph of radish sowing and harvesting dates to help us even out our supply.

Here’s a chart. 1/25 is our last worthwhile sowing date for hoophouse radishes.

Radish #1	sown 9/6	Harvest 10/5 – 11/15
#2	sown 10/1	Harvest 11/6 – 12/25
#3	sown 10/30	Harvest 12/16 – 2/7
#4	sown 11/29	Harvest 1/16 – 2/25
#5	sown 12/23	Harvest 2/19 – 3/16

Root Crops to Harvest in Central Virginia in September

During September, the root crops we can harvest include beets (and beet greens), carrots, radishes, turnips and horseradish (which I have more to say about below). We hold off on parsnips, if we have grown those, as the flavor improves a lot after a frost.

We could harvest potatoes, which I have written about in Potato Harvesting and Root Crops in June. We hold off on sweet potatoes until October, and I’ll write about them in a post of their own in a few weeks. If you need to harvest earlier, read the chapter in Sustainable Market Farming.

Special Root Crop Topic for September in Central Virginia: Horseradish

Horseradish, Armoracia rusticana, a perennial, is very easily propagated from pieces of root. It can be hard to get rid of if you change your mind! It’s wise to plant your perennial food crops in a special place that isn’t part of your annual crop rotation space. Remove all perennial weeds before planting horseradish or any other perennial vegetable. Ours is beside our grape vines, near our rhubarb. Full sun or partial shade will work. Horseradish looks like a big bad dock growing, but is in fact a brassica. Horseradish can provide value-added products for out-of-season sales, as well as a pungent treat in cold weather.

Buy or beg crowns or root pieces, and plant them 4-6 weeks before your average last frost date. Horseradish grows best in cool, damp regions with temperatures between 45°F (7°C) and 75°F (24°C). But in central Virginia, temperatures go from 0°F (-18°C) and 100°F (38°C) and we have more than enough horseradish, so don’t worry too much about that temperature range.

Plant crowns just at soil level. Plant root pieces with the top just below the surface and the bottom end covered with 2-3’ (5-8 cm) of soil. Space horseradish plants 24-36” (60-90 cm) apart. If you are worried about it spreading into important nearby plants, create a metal, wood or stone barrier 24” (60 cm) deep around the bed.

Keep the soil damp, add some compost once a year. You are unlikely to have any pest or disease problems with this crop. Young plants should not be harvested until the leaves are at least 12” (30 cm) long.

Horseradish is traditionally harvested September-April (the months with R in them!). The roots go as much as 2 ft (60 cm) deep and are very strong (but not as sturdy as gobo, Chinese burdock). Use a strong shovel, spade or digging fork, and start loosening the roots from 6” (15 cm) away. If you hear or feel a root snap, be glad! The goal is to extract some of the roots and firm up whatever remains, to continue growing. Water the plants after harvest if the weather is dry.

Collect the harvested root parts in a bucket, and wash them right away. You can store them dirty, but it is harder to get them clean later. Harvested roots can be refrigerated for several months until used – they seem fairly impervious to rot.

When you process horseradish do it outdoors, with googles on. I kid you not! This can be a good porch activity in sunny chilly weather. After thoroughly washing and scrubbing the roots, peel them carefully. Throw the peelings in the trash, not the compost pile, as they easily regrow from tiny pieces!

The peeled roots can be ground up in a food processor, to make relish or sauce. Or if you prefer, use a fine grater.

If you want to buy plants, try Nourse Farms

If you’d like to read more about horseradish, including container plants grown as an annual, there’s info on Harvest to Table

If you’d like to read how to make the condiment, see Barbara Pleasant’s article on GrowVeg

Other Root Crop Tasks in Central Virginia in September: Washing, sorting and storing root crops

Harvesting

How you harvest roots depends on the scale of your farm and the equipment you have. For example, with carrots, you can mow or tear off the tops, then undercut with machinery, then lift. Or you can use the tops to help get the carrots out of ground, as we do, loosening them with a digging fork, then trim.

Ensure gentle treatment and no bruising of roots while harvesting. As we all know, it is important to avoid bacterial contamination. Wounds and abrasions can lead the crop to pick up new bacteria from the environment. Crops can be punctured by sharp edges of containers as well as the more obvious knives and fingernails.

Trimming

Our method is to bring the harvested roots to a shady spot to trim, wash, sort and bag. We have a printed sheet, optimistically called “Perfect Vegetable Storage” to help us remember from year to year the tips we have learned. Usually we need scissors or knives for a clean cut, and usually we aim to leave about ¼” (0.5 cm) of leaf-stems attached to roots. It might be quicker to tear the leaves off, but this doesn’t give such good results and can cause the crop to need extra storage space. When we harvest carrots for immediate use, we snap the tops off right at the junction of the foliage and the root. When we harvest for storage, we trim with scissors to leave a small length of greens.

Washing and rinsing

After washing, and perhaps before, comes cooling. Make full use of all possibilities, such as damp burlap, or high percentage shade cloth, or the shade of trees, buildings, or a truck. At the washing station, crops may be sprayed down on a mesh table, or dunked in troughs or buckets of clean water. Washing can also act to cool the crop.

Draining away the water is important. Drain on a mesh table or in a holey bucket, a suspended mesh bag or laundry basket. Barrel root washers have the draining stage built in. We don’t have a rotary barrel root washer, much as we’d like one. Here’s our manual method.

1. As you cut, gently drop the roots into buckets of water. This lets the dirt wash itself off to some extent, as you continue to cut more. Use whatever size and type of container seems most efficient.
2. When the wash container is full, switch from trimming to washing: rub each root with your hands and drop it gently into a container of clean rinse water. Depending on the cleanliness of the roots after washing, it may be possible to reuse the rinse water. Or else make it be wash water for the next round. Once the water is quite dirty it needs to go. Gently pour it round a tree, or on the ground somewhere else. Avoid causing a washout by flinging a bucketful all in one place. Rinsing needs pretty clean water.
3. When the rinse container is full, get two clean holey buckets. Take the roots one at a time out of the rinse water (don’t rub then any more, just lift them out). Sort as you go.

Sorting storable roots from non-storable

1. Decide if the root is Storable or is Use First (cull, or home use). Storable are sound, reasonably large. Use First may be small (less than ¾” diameter, less than 3” long, maybe) or damaged (deep holes, soft spots, fresh complex cracks). Open dry cracks or snapped-in-half roots may heal over and store just fine.

   

   We made different sized holes in a special bucket lid, to help new people get an idea of size.

2. Put the storable ones in one holey bucket and the non-storable (Use First) in the other. It helps to have 2 different colored buckets. It’s better to err on the side of calling doubtful ones Use First, but it’s even better to learn good sorting, as too many Use First roots can’t all be used quickly.
3. When a Use First bucket is full, set it aside, or put on the cart or truck. Once a Storable bucket is full, set it aside to drain thoroughly before bagging. Do not confuse categories. Do more trimming, washing, rinsing, sorting.
4. When the Storable roots have drained, get a well-perforated plastic sack. Ensure there are enough holes and big enough ones. Buy perforated bags or perforate your own. If you need more holes, the safest method is to lay the bag on the grass, stand on diagonally opposite corners, then stab the bag with a largish knife. Make about 3 cuts across the width of the bag and about 6? 7? 8? down the length. Or fold the bag and use a 3-ring paper hole punch in several places. Refold and repeat.
5. Gently pour the Storable roots into the well-perforated bag. We usually use 50 pound bags. Tie the neck with a short length of rope and make a masking tape “flag” label with the date and the type of vegetable.

Storing

When all the bags of storers have been gathered up, record the number going to the cooler on an Inventory clipboard. If there is no official tally sheet, make one on a full size sheet of paper.

We store bulk roots in a walk-in cooler, up on a high loft/shelf. Use pallets in the loft for better airflow under the bags. Start a new pallet for each different type of vegetable and for a substantially different date, eg fall carrots separate from spring carrots. Keep inventory: once a month, someone takes stock of what we have and updates the list.

See Root Crops in August for details on sorting newly stored potatoes