Time for Turnips

 

We did a bit of a turnip grow-out this year. It's a well-known fact (if you read this blog) that I am taken with occasional fits of inexplicable enthusiasm, and for some reason last year, during seed-catalogue season, I was taken with a fit of enthusiasm for turnips. For one thing, there was a good selection of some unusual varieties. 

 

The prominent long black ones in the front left are Noir Long du Pardailhan. Next to them, in the lower right are Scarlet Ohno Revival. The top right are Aprovecho Hardy, and to the left of them are Goldana and Goldette, which not too surprisingly got a bit confused during harvest. I don't recall ever seeing green shoulders on Goldana, though, so maybe those are the Goldettes; however even if that's the case I'm pretty sure not all the Goldettes had them. 

Noir Long du Pardailhan is a rare survivor of  a very old form of turnip, from the village of Pardailhan in France. The slightly larger size, elongated carrot shape, and rough, grey-black skin make them almost unrecognizable as turnips today. You are looking at pretty much all the harvest we got of them, other than a smaller one which we have already eaten. I think they are certainly capable of doing better; we threw in the seeds mid-summer and left them to their own devices subsequently. We should have at least thinned them. It is fortunate that the voles do not seem too interested in turnips. 

In spite of their seeming coarseness, the flesh was as white, smooth, sweet, and tender as any other, and better than some. Thus far I am not inclined to quite such effusions as the Slow Food page linked above, but it perhaps depends some on soil (ours is about as different from the native clay as possible) and perhaps once we eat the better specimens we will be even more impressed. Already, I think these are very good turnips, and I would certainly grow them again.

 

The Scarlet Ohno Revival is one I have had my eye on since we first started gardening here, but it has been hard to find. Few people carried it, and those who did we ended up not ordering from for lack of other desired choices. However, last year it was suddenly available at a few Canadian seed houses. These are by far the most attractive of the turnips we grew this year, with a rich beety magenta colour to skins, stems, and leaves. Inside they are white, perhaps blushed with pink. They also produced as many good specimens as any of the types we planted. I put one into the stew I made to test out all these turnips (Spanish Beef & Turnip Stew) and it was tasty and smooth, but definitely firmer and slower to cook than any of the others. I'm not sure it was an ideal specimen to test, though; it was a good 4" in diameter and had a certain amount of insect damage, which is why we wanted to eat it and not store it. But size tends to bring toughness to turnips - although even at that size I wouldn't say this was tough - and insect damage doesn't tend to improve flavour, at all. I left the skins on because I wanted to see how it did cooked, and it kept a nice colour and was perfectly edible. Excellent! This is another one I'll want to grow again. 

Scarlet Ohno Revival comes to us through the good work of Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seeds and OSSI. The original Scarlet Ohno was a Japanese variety, apparently once but no longer available in North America, and recreated by Frank Morton from similar and other-named but likely the same turnips. We're glad he did! I'm going to grow THESE again too. Are you detecting a theme yet? 

 

We got Aprovecho Hardy from Adaptive Seeds, and it is another OSSI registered variety. We found these to be one of the slower growing of the turnips this year, but overall their performance was fairly similar to the others. There are a couple of big ones, but most of them stayed fairly small. In spite of their (untested by us yet) hardiness, they were thin-skinned and very tender with a fine flavour. There were a few oddly shaped, off-type ones, but most of them were charming little white-skinned balls, with or without purple or green collars. Same old story! Happy to have them; will grow them again. 

 

These came out of breeding work by Alan Kapuler in Oregon; and it should perhaps be noted that when they say hardy, they mean Oregon hardy and maybe not Ontario hardy. I was about to say I would find out, but I think we've dug them all, so not this year I guess.  

Finally, we have the Goldana and the Goldette. We have been getting Goldana from William Dam for a few years now, and it has been (and maybe continues... don't know... must try a few more...) to be my favourite turnip. I've written about it already. We got Goldette from Annapolis Seeds even though it sounded very similar, and it is. We weren't careful during harvest and they got mixed up, and I can't really tell which are which, apart from the above-mentioned green shoulders, although perhaps it will be clearer if we eat some. But I doubt it. I don't think you can go wrong with either one; golden turnips are truly unique and excellent. They really don't taste as sharp as the white fleshed ones, and if you are not mad about the white ones, give one of the golden ones a try. 

As for me, it will not surprise anyone to hear that I would really like to try crossing the Scarlet Ohno Revival and perhaps Goldette (or Goldana) next year, to see what happens. I may not be able to; we only planted a row or so of each, which we then did not thin, and so most of the harvest is in the photo above. I'm not sure how well they will keep overwinter, always assuming we don't just eat them anyway. But it's something to think about. Perhaps if I started some in a pot indoors, and planted them out while it was still fairly cold in the spring, I could trick them into thinking it was time to go to seed. Hmmm.