Turnips, which we learn about from Russians in childhood folk tales, you need to be able to grow. It does not always please the summer resident with its huge size and appetizing appearance. The useful root crop of an unlucky summer resident often disappears entirely into the tops or has an unsightly appearance due to wormholes. Therefore, the question of when to plant seeds in open ground is quite relevant.
Subject to the conditions of care and agricultural technology, cultivation is available in the garden in many regions of Russia.
Short growing season 60 – 80 days allows you to get it over the summer two harvests. The first sowing is carried out in the Moscow region in mid-spring - April, early May. In the Urals and Siberia, the timing is almost the same; turnips are planted there in early May, and in early spring - in late April.
Planted in the spring Root vegetables are not stored for long; they are used for summer consumption or used in winter preparations. Marketable root crops are harvested at the end of June, beginning of July.
Seeds hatch at zero temperature. Young seedlings can withstand nighttime temperatures dropping to -6 degrees. The optimal temperature for seed germination is 15 degrees.
Second seeding – summer, produces a harvest suitable for long-term winter storage. IN central lane sowing deadline July(first ten days), in the northern regions (Siberia, Ural) summer sowing should be carried out mid to late June.
When sowing at a later date, the root crop may not form even when using early ripening varieties. You can calculate the period more precisely: subtract the ripening time indicated on the pack from the date of the expected end of the season.
The best varieties for planting in the Moscow region and Central Russia
In the Moscow region, any variety planted at the right time will give good harvest. Thanks to frequent rains, turnips grow excellently at dachas near Moscow. For winter consumption, we can recommend an old, proven variety - "Petrovskaya-1".
Petrovskaya turnip is suitable For long-term storage . Root vegetables are yellow with white, juicy pulp. The taste is pleasant, slightly sweet. The shape of the root crops is neat, flat-round. The growing season is 70-80 days.
Not a bad variety for the Moscow region - ideal option for summer. The root vegetable is juicy, tasty with white flesh and skin. The leaves are edible and contain beta-carotene. Plus varieties - doesn't shoot.
Turnip varieties for growing in Siberia and the Urals
The variety will be an excellent choice for Ural and Siberian summer residents. Root vegetables will delight large size(2 kg), excellent classic taste and long shelf life. Sow the Russian size variety at the end of June, harvest after 2 - 2.5 months.
The variety is ideal for summer consumption. Root vegetables are large, white, without bitterness, recommended for dietary nutrition. The yield of the variety is consistently high. The leaves can be used to make salads.
Seed preparation
Improve germination seed material, you can rid him of possible infections in various ways:
- Bubbling during the day.
- Use a biostimulator solution for soaking.
- Prepare an infusion of ash (a tablespoon per liter), leave for 24 hours, keep the seeds in the prepared solution for 6 hours.
- Seeds soak in garlic water for 2 hours. Garlic water protects against bacteriosis. You need to take a tablespoon of grated garlic, pour a little warm water(½ cup).
- Germinate seeds in a damp cloth. Constantly moisten the napkin and periodically open it for ventilation.
- Pour the seeds into a small jar, close it with a lid and place in a container with hot water(50 degrees).
After any treatment, dry the seeds and only then sow.
Turnip seeds - very small size The seeds are small in size and dark in color. Sowing is difficult: it is difficult to standardize the number of seeds per unit area, it is difficult to see where it is sown and where it is not. The seeds can be mixed with river sand or sprinkled with potato starch.
Preparing a bed for planting in the garden
The ridge can be arranged in areas where they grew tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, corn, beans. It is impossible to plant after radishes and cabbage. You can dig up the ridge in the fall, adding a standard set of fertilizers (superphosphate, potassium nitrate, humus), or in the spring, adding additional urea.
If you have wood ash, you should definitely add it to the soil when preparing the ridge. 1 cup is enough per square meter. Turnip responds well to ashes. Digging depth is at least 20 cm.
Fresh manure is not applied under turnips. Manure reduces the quality of root crops.
Technology for sowing turnip seeds in the ground
To grow turnips, you do not need to grow seedlings at home in advance.
I come the day before sowing the seeds water well, spending for every sq. m 2 buckets of water. Rows are marked on the ridge, maintaining an interval of 30 cm between them.
Seed placement depth on light soils 2 cm, on heavy ones, clay soils – 1 cm. It is better to sprinkle the seeds in the furrows with sifted compost or humus. Seed rate per square meter 1 g.
Conditions for post-planting care
Already on the 7th day, the first green shoots will appear, on the 5th day, if the daytime air temperature is above 15 degrees. Emerging seedlings require watering. You should not expect high-quality root crops if you neglect watering. If there is a lack of moisture, the root vegetables will be small, not juicy, with hard flesh. Watering rate 20 l/m².
Usually turnips sprout frequently; after 2 - 3 weeks the shoots stand thin out. After the first procedure, a distance of 3 cm is left between the two plants. A little later, the planting will have to be done again. At spring sowing 6 cm is left between two sprouts, and 10 cm for summer sprouts.
On average, up to 50 root crops should be placed on each square meter.
The main pest of young turnips is cruciferous flea beetle. The pest poses a danger in the first month after germination. If pests appear, treat the bed with Iskra.
The second most dangerous pest of young turnips is cabbage fly. It is scared away from young plantings by tobacco dust, shag, hot pepper, and ash. The ridges are dusted the next day after watering.
Turnips are especially good in winter. Cabbage soup with sauerkraut and turnips - an original Russian dish that will satisfy even a gourmet. It is not difficult to grow healthy root vegetables for the winter, the main thing is to water them on time.
When planning planting at your dacha, remember that any crop requires a special approach. If you accurately calculate when to plant turnips and then properly care for them, the root crops will grow very, very large, like in a fairy tale. It will be impossible for the old grandfather to pull them out; he will have to call young assistants or use garden tool. Although not a single peasant family in Rus' could live without this vegetable, it began to be cultivated not here, but in Western Asia 4 thousand years ago. Until residents of Russian villages became acquainted with potatoes, turnips were the main product from which first and second courses were prepared.
What kind of turnips will we plant?
The most commonly found seeds on sale are the Petrovskaya turnip seeds. Many gardeners are accustomed to this variety, and not everyone knows that you can grow many other varieties and add more variety to the flavor palette of vegetable dishes. Some families even eat turnips - turnips - and prepare wonderful dishes from it. Breeders have developed special salad varieties, in which the tops are also used for food.
Depending on the ripening period, there are early varieties of turnips, which you can taste within 1.5-2 months after planting, medium ones, which ripen in 2-3 months, and late ones, which need at least 90 days to gain full volume. In addition, plants differ in taste, size of root crops, possibility of winter storage and many other indicators.
Plant varieties that best suit your needs:
- Petrovskaya is perfectly stored, the root vegetable is yellow;
- White Night - fruits white weighing up to 500 g;
- Snegurochka - a variety with leaves suitable for salad and small white turnips;
- May yellow greenhead– early ripening turnips are not suitable for summer use; they are not suitable for storage;
- Sapphire – grown mainly for salad leaves;
- Geisha is a cold-resistant variety with excellent-tasting white roots and lettuce leaves.
Another feature of turnips is that they pollinate very easily. If you want to get your own seeds, plant the bed at a distance from areas where cabbage family crops grow. If this problem is not difficult to solve, then the cress grows wherever it wants, regardless of your desire. Destroy this weed in a timely manner, do not even leave it in a vacant lot next to the beds, so that next year you will not have an incomprehensible hybrid growing instead of a turnip.
When to plant turnips so that the root crop is juicy and large
If you want to get an early harvest of turnips, sow the seeds for seedlings a couple of months before planting in open ground. In the second half of May, the seedlings can be moved to the garden bed. The second way to speed up the ripening of root crops is to sow before winter. Under the snow, the seeds will harden, prepare for the development of embryos, and early spring you will see friendly shoots.
Not all gardeners want to tinker with seedlings; turnips are usually sown directly into open ground. IN middle lane this work can be carried out from late April to early June. The main condition is that the soil should already thaw and warm up a little. Frost-resistant seeds can germinate even if the temperature is slightly above 0⁰. Root vegetables obtained from spring planting, suitable only for use in short terms, they are not suitable for winter storage. To avoid wasting labor and seeds, consider how many fresh turnips you will need during the summer months.
To store turnips for long-term storage, they should be sown in July. When choosing a date, be guided by the ripening time of the selected variety and the climatic conditions of your area. Among the peasants in Rus' best time Turnip harvesting was considered to be Vozdvizhenye, or September 27th. In the middle zone at this time it is Indian summer, the most favorable weather for harvesting root crops. If the seed packet says ripening time is 60 days, add a week or a week and a half for the emergence of seedlings, and you will see that you need to sow in mid-July. It is especially undesirable to delay planting: if the crop falls under frost, the fruits will become soft, tasteless and unsuitable for storage.
Preparing seedlings
Many diseases of cruciferous crops, which include turnips, are transmitted through seed. Before sowing, dissolve 5 g of salt in 100 ml of water, throw the seeds into a glass and stir well. Only grains that have sunk to the bottom are suitable for cultivation. Throw away any floating specimens; they will be of no use. To disinfect, warm the seeds in a fabric bag in a thermos with water at a temperature of about 54⁰ for 20 minutes - and immediately cool in cold water. In this way you will kill the infection and harden the embryos. Instead of heating, you can use a solution of potassium permanganate: 4 g of powder per glass of water.
After disinfection, rinse the grains and place them in damp cloth for pecking. If you are going to grow seedlings in boxes, you can sow the seeds thickly.
Turnips do not tolerate root damage well. If you want to grow strong, healthy seedlings, it is better to sow the grains in peat tablets or pots that you bury in the garden bed.
Seedlings need high humidity, and the comfortable temperature for them is from +5⁰С to +15⁰С. Cover the crops with a glass cover and take them out to glazed loggia, there they will get stronger and be ready for growing in open ground. When shoots appear, cut off weak plants with scissors, leaving only strong specimens. Further care consists of watering, fertilizing and loosening.
At the age of one and a half months, begin to harden off the plants. Every day, take them out into the open air, first in the middle of the day and gradually increase the time of “walking”. In 2 weeks, the turnip should be so hardened that it can be left outside around the clock. Growing turnips from seedlings is a labor-intensive method, and this crop does not like transplanting. It is not afraid of frost, the seeds can be sown in a greenhouse in early spring, and you will reap the first harvest not much later than when planting seedlings in open ground.
Planting in a garden bed
It is better to prepare beds for turnips in the fall. Select an area where they used to grow legumes, potatoes or tomatoes. It is better not to plant after cruciferous crops, horseradish or watercress: pests and infections that are dangerous to root crops may remain in the soil. If you want to save space and compact the bed with other crops, plant beans in between the rows. Turnips love light loams, sandy loams and peat bogs; they do not like the acidic reaction of the soil. If you notice that sorrel or horsetail is growing happily in the garden bed, add lime to the soil. On acidic soils, turnips can grow and produce a good harvest, but the root crops will not be stored well.
Turnips love ash very much. Before digging, light a large fire in the future garden bed, and then distribute the burnt coals over the entire area.
Fresh turnip manure is contraindicated; during autumn digging, add 3 kg of rotted organic matter to each m2. Add 15 g each of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate fertilizers. Now you can sow the seeds before winter or early spring. First loosen the soil, then lightly compact it. The distance between the furrows should be about 20 cm. If you do not save seeds, sow thickly, 1 cm per seed. When shoots appear, you will destroy all weak plants so that only the strongest specimens remain in the garden bed. If turnips are planted in the spring, plant the seeds 2 cm deep; in the fall, make the grooves a little deeper. You need to sow after frost, when the soil is already frozen and has turned into dense clods. Sprinkle the seeds with peat that has been kept warm and wait for spring when the shoots appear.
If you sow turnips before winter, mark the edges of the rows with small stakes so that in the spring you know where the shoots should appear.
When the plantings sprout, remove weak specimens; do not pay attention to the density of seedlings for now. To protect against cruciferous flea beetle, treat the bed with ash, and then mulch with hay or last year's fallen leaves in a layer no thinner than 5 cm. Weeds will not break through such a barrier, the soil will remain loose and retain moisture for a long time. After half a month, carry out a second thinning, during which you need to provide space for the turnips. The distance between plants should be at least 10 cm.
Caring for young plants
Turnip is an unpretentious plant, but if you leave it completely without care, the harvest will be meager and tasteless. Plants are especially demanding when it comes to watering. If you have ever tasted a bitter, hard root vegetable, it means that the owners spared water for the garden when growing it. In dry weather, you need to moisten the beds 2 times a week; for each m2 you need to pour at least 5 liters of water. Watering should be stopped when the turnips reach the right size: Excess moisture will then cause cracks.
There are 3 periods when plants especially need watering:
- from sowing seeds to emergence of seedlings;
- during the formation of true leaves;
- with active growth of root crops.
Turnips do not need special feeding. If you have prepared the bed correctly, there should be enough food for the plants. During growth, you can fertilize it with organic matter a couple of times. Newly emerged seedlings can be watered with herbal infusion. To protect against pests, you can spray the plantings with a decoction of tomato leaves or potato tops. Before processing, dissolve 40 g of soap shavings in 10 liters of broth.
Conclusion
To get an early harvest of turnips, you can grow them through seedlings, but this is a troublesome task, the plants do not tolerate transplantation well. It is better to sow the seeds in open ground as soon as the ground warms up a little. You will receive a harvest of early ripening varieties 1.5 months after the shoots appear. If you also plant salad varieties, you can enjoy delicious, juicy leaves.
When sowing in spring, the entire crop must be consumed after harvesting. For winter use, seeds should be sown in July. Correctly calculate the planting time to harvest the entire crop before the onset of frost. Pay attention to the characteristics of the variety: some varieties are not suitable for long-term storage. They need to be eaten first.
This culture does not like density; after the entrances appear, the plantings need to be thinned out. The rest of the care is easy. If the soil was properly prepared in advance, a couple of fertilizing will be enough. Special attention needs to be watered. Turnip is an unpretentious and grateful plant; give it just a little attention, and it will repay you with a rich, tasty harvest.
Although turnips were previously considered the food of the poor and were not the most popular crop, at a certain time they acquired a “name” and began to be used even at expensive feasts and banquets. Today the crop is grown in every second dacha and takes up space on the table as a vitamin-rich and quite tasty fruit.
There are a lot of recipes with turnips, although many of us know only a few of them, or have never cooked the root vegetable at all. However, if you keep it in the country small area With turnips, you can get fruits rich in vitamin C, B vitamins, calcium, iron, potassium and phosphorus, which perfectly support health in the body.
Soil for planting turnips
Light soil is considered the most favorable. These can be peat bogs, sandstones, loams. It is advisable to fertilize the soil well and make it neutral in time if the acidity is high. In this case, liming or adding ash works well, 120-150 g/m2.
Landing place
It is advisable to choose a flat and warm area for the turnip, without any special drafts or shading. Although if you plant a root crop in a place convenient for you, this will not especially affect the yield. The only thing is that you should not grow turnips in those areas of the garden where cabbage plants were grown in past years.
Planting turnips in the country
To obtain early root crops, turnips are planted at the end of April, or maybe at the beginning of May, the main thing is that the soil is already slightly warmed up. If the root crop is grown for winter storage, planting occurs in early June.
Before planting seeds, the soil should be loosened, but immediately rolled down a little. In the garden bed you need to make shallow furrows, only 1-2 cm, in rows every 20 cm. Sowing does not occur very densely, 2 seeds per centimeter. If you get small seeds in general, then sowing can be done with ballast, mixing the seeds with sand. After sowing, the beds are mulched with humus, and after a few days they are sprinkled with ash.
Be careful with early sowing of turnips, as their seedlings can be destroyed by pests!
Seedling care
When planted in early spring, turnip seedlings do not suffer from temperature in any way. They only need +1+3°C to germinate and develop.
Most favorable conditions For young plants, mild weather is considered, sunlight and minimum shading. Therefore, it is correct to grow turnips in open ground.
You should not be late with thinning; the first must be done already at the stage of formation of several true leaves. Thinning is done in such a way that there is 3-5 cm of free space between plants. After 2-3 weeks, repeated thinning is carried out, when all weak and diseased plants are removed from the row, and a planting is formed with gaps of up to 8-10 cm.
It is most correct to carry out this process in the late afternoon, as well as on wet soil.
Tillage
When caring for young crops, it is necessary to cultivate the soil in the garden bed. It should be systematically loosened to increase aeration, and all possible weeds should be removed. It is advisable to do this manually so as not to damage the greens.
Fertilizer application
If the soil is fertile, then it will not require special fertilizing. All you have to do is add slurry and boric acid(0.1% solution) to nourish the plants.
You can also add ash to the soil, which is done after watering the plants in the garden bed.
Watering turnips
Initially, turnips are planted on flat or even slightly lower areas so that the soil maintains an acceptable level of moisture. Good root crops can only be obtained with normal nutrition of the plants.
If the summer turned out to be dry or the planting took place on high areas, root crops will need watering. It is enough to do it several times a week, using up to 30 liters of water for each square meter of planting.
If turnips are not watered, the quality of the fruit will seriously deteriorate. They can become bitter, crack or thicken and dry out, which also spoils the taste and presentation.
Young crops are watered from a watering can with a fine sieve so as not to damage the plants with the stream; taller turnips can be watered from a hose with a standard diffuser.
Particular attention should be paid to watering during the growing season and several weeks before harvest, since at this stage the fruit and its qualities are actively developing.
Harvesting turnips in the country
Harvesting is carried out in several stages and, depending on how you grew the turnips, for an early or late harvest.
Root crops with a diameter of 7-10 cm are considered the most suitable, but earlier harvesting is also possible, when the turnip reaches a diameter of 4-5 cm. If harvesting is late, do not delay until frost, since even the slightest step to the side negative temperatures makes the fruits soft and not particularly tasty. Moreover, in this state they cannot be stored for long.
Plants are removed from the soil without much effort, just with your hands. Sometimes you can dig up a turnip so as not to damage the adult fruit. Plants affected by pests and diseased are then discarded, while the highest quality crops are cleared of tops and soil and dried on fresh air and placed in dry, cool and dark storage.
When harvesting, try not to damage the skin of the root vegetables, as this may negatively affect further storage!
If the turnips were grown in a favorable climate and in compliance with all agricultural technology conditions, you can get a fairly good harvest, up to 3-4 kg per square meter landings.
Turnip varieties
Professional summer residents and specialist breeders today identify the most successful varieties for planting in the country. We are pleased to present them and hope that they will produce a good harvest at your dacha!
White night
A variety of large turnip that grows to a weight of 400-500 g. Mid-season variety with tasty and juicy white pulp, which does not require special care, only timely thinning and watering.
White ball
Mid-season high-yielding variety, the fruits of which can be eaten whole, even the leaves are used. The pulp has a moderate sweetish taste without bitterness, the weight of the fruit reaches 500 g.
Comet
The difference is immediately noticeable, because the variety grows to small sizes and the weight of each root vegetable is only 100-120 g. Moreover, the fruits are quite juicy and tasty, although they differ in shape from the standard.
Our list also includes the following varieties: Golden Ball, Luna, Geisha, Orbita, Petrovskaya-1, Early Purple, Snezhok, Snegurochka, Milanskaya White and Munich Early. Each has its own benefits and has high vitamin and mineral value.
Turnip and its beneficial properties (video)
Growing turnips in the country is a good thing, except for delicious dishes prepared with its use, you can get many useful substances from the consumption of the fruit, and increase the level of health of the body.
We will plant. We decided on which part of our garden it would be more comfortable for her to grow and learned about best terms planting turnips.
Now it’s time for our Russian fairy-tale beauty to take her place in the garden.
Planting, growing and caring for turnips is not a difficult task.
A gardener needs to know only a few agrotechnical tricks.
Turnip is an unpretentious vegetable. Even if she did not find a separate corner in the garden, she can be planted with some green crop (dill, lettuce).
Turnip, where will you live?
Turnips feel great after any vegetable crops (cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, pumpkin, legumes or squash).
But this beauty will not become a follower of cruciferous plants (radish, cabbage, daikon, radish).
Turnips planted after such crops run the risk of getting sick due to oversaturation common pests and soil acidification.
In such areas, turnips should be planted only after 4-5 years.
In order for the planting of turnips and its further development to be successful, take into account the wishes of the Russian garden beauty.
Where you should not plant root crops:
- Into the ground, too saturated with organic matter and rotted fertilizers. Such soil negatively affects the quality of future fruits - tasty root vegetables can become frail and hollow.
- In poor soils, where there is little nutrients. If there is a deficiency of a mineral such as boron, turnip fruits will develop voids and become bitter.
What does a turnip need? Fertile and light soil! Loose, and in no case clayey!
To compensate for the lack of nutrients, when digging and preparing the beds for sowing turnips (digging is carried out to a depth of a shovel bayonet), the following fertilizers are applied (for each square meter):
- Nitrogen, potassium chloride and urea (20 g each).
- Potassium and superphosphate (40 g each).
If the soil on your site is loamy, when autumn preparation In the beds for planting turnips, add a mixture of humus and sand (5-6 kg per square meter) into the ground.
Humus can replace manure. We add it along with slaked lime (500 g of lime and 5 kg of manure per sq.m.).
Subject to availability sandy soil– add one humus (8-9 kg per sq.m.).
If you have not had time to prepare the area for planting turnips in the fall, then under no circumstances apply fresh manure in the spring before planting.
Don’t forget to fertilize the soil in the spring (when loosening) with wood ash (300-350 g per square meter).
Ash will protect young turnip seedlings from the voracious and dangerous cruciferous flea beetle.
Planting a fairy tale culture
In order for turnips, which are completely easy to plant and care for, to grow surprisingly large, healthy and tasty, turnip seeds should be prepared for future life.
What is required:
- Wrap the seeds in cotton cloth.
- Dip them in water heated to +50⁰ C for 5-7 minutes.
- Remove them from the warm bath, dry them slightly and mix with sand.
Well preparation. Turnip seeds are very small, so before planting turnips, the soil should be thoroughly loosened, completely destroying weeds and their remains.
To sow seeds, prepare furrows with a depth of about 4 cm and a row spacing of 25-30 cm.
We fill the prepared grooves halfway with sand, sprinkle ash on top and pour them with solutions of EM preparations (interpreted as “effective microorganisms”).
Such products contain pure yeast, enzymatic fungi, lactic acid and photosynthetic bacteria.
Beneficial microorganisms included in EM preparations increase the nutritional value and fertility of the soil many times over. The most common product in this series is the drug Baikal-EM1.
Planting seeds. Planting material We lay out the turnips in a nesting manner, placing 3 pieces at a time with a distance between nests of 13-15 cm.
Turnips cannot stand thickening! Excessive crowding leads to damage to the growing roots.
Sprinkle the sown seeds with sand and top with compost (or loose soil, humus or coconut substrate).
After planting the turnips, we remove the covering material after a couple of days - at this time the first timid shoots will already appear.
Caring for a garden young lady
The turnip is a plant with a purely peasant character; it is unpretentious and easy to care for.
These properties distinguish it from most other root crops and vegetables.
To make caring for turnips a pleasant experience, you should know the following simple recommendations.
Watering. To get strong, juicy and crispy fruits from our beauty, the turnip should be watered regularly and abundantly (at least a couple of times weekly).
If the root crop does not receive enough moisture, small fruits will grow, unpleasant and rough in taste.
Watering is especially important for turnips of salad varieties and young plants.
Water consumption (per sq.m):
- When the first shoots appear and at the beginning of intensive growth of the root crop, 7-8 liters of water.
- As soon as the turnip has gained the volume of root crop corresponding to its variety, we reduce the water consumption to 3-3.5 liters. After all, excess moisture is also harmful - the fruits can crack.
After each watering, be sure to mulch the crops with straw or sawdust - mulch will save and retain moisture.
Loosening. When, after planting a turnip, its roots begin to form, it is especially important to monitor the looseness of the soil.
Hard, compacted soil causes ripening, deformation of the fruit, a decrease in its size and a deterioration in taste.
Therefore, after each moisture contact with the soil (watering or rain), after 10-12 hours of planting, turnips should be thoroughly loosened.
Combine loosening with weeding. This way you will saturate the soil with more oxygen.
But when loosening turnips for the first time, be sure to additionally flavor the soil with dry mustard or wood ash.
This will protect the tender sprouts from flea beetles.
Thinning. To grow into a strong and healthy plant, turnips need personal space.
This is why we thin it out:
- The first time we thin out the crops of a week-old turnip, leaving the strongest plant in each nest.
- The second time we remove excess plants 25-30 days after the first thinning. At the same time, we maintain a distance of 12-15 cm between each plant. For culture early varieties you can reduce the distances a little, but no more than 8-10 cm between root crops.
Thinning is stressful for any plant, so it is better to carry out this process in the evening, a couple of hours after watering.
This way, unnecessary shoots will be removed faster, and the remaining ones will get stronger better by remaining overnight in moist soil.
Fertilizer. The best feeding for turnips - wood ash.
Experienced gardeners advise watering turnip crops with an ash solution (a glass of ash per 9-10 liters of water) 2 times every week.
It is necessary to feed turnips only with mineral fertilizers!
Nitrogen fertilizing can be applied only once - when the first true leaves appear on the crop.
The best fertilizer for young root crops is a solution of ammonium nitrate (10 g of substance per 9-10 liters of water).
Just be careful not to overfeed the turnips with nitrogen, as they may become crumbly and cannot be stored for long.
Turnip needs mineral fertilizers. And it is advisable to apply such fertilizers to the plant in liquid form.
If you want to feed turnips with dry almond supplements, do it at the same time as watering or after a good rain.
For fertilizers, it is advisable to use ready-made complexes or prepare the fertilizer yourself:
- Potassium 1.5-2 g.
- Urea 2-2.5 g.
- Superphosphate 6-6.5 g.
The norm of substances is given per liter of water. Consumption is ½ liter of fertilizer per square meter.
It is enough to feed the turnips twice during the entire growing season. The first time - after the first thinning, the second - 15-20 days after the first feeding.
Protecting turnips from pests
To protect turnip plantings, it is better to use a folk pharmacy rather than chemicals.
These small multi-colored bugs (they can be black, green, blue) are very jumping, which allows pests to quickly colonize large areas.
Pests begin their activity in the spring (when the air warms up to +15⁰ C).
They are less active in mid-summer (July). They mercilessly destroy the tops of the plant and lead to the death of the turnip.
What to do? The fight against the most dangerous pests for turnips should be approached comprehensively.
Traditional methods:
Cabbage and turnip whites. The voracious caterpillars of cute butterflies are dangerous for turnips.
They feed on the tops, leading to the death of the vegetable. Adults are greenish-blue with small black spots and yellow stripes.
Caterpillars live up to a month, managing to cause great harm to our turnips in such a short time.
To combat voracious caterpillars, use the following recipes:
- Ordinary wasps will help deal with caterpillars. Attract them to turnip plantings by spraying the beds sweet water with sugar or jam. Wasps feed their offspring with harmful caterpillars, significantly reducing their population.
- Having noticed the caterpillars, destroy them by ash spraying: pour a couple of glasses of ash substance and a tablespoon of tar shampoo (or liquid soap) into 10-11 liters of water.
- Onion infusion also becomes a life-saving remedy. Take liter jar and fill it with onion peels, pour boiling water (2 liters) over it and leave to steep for a couple of days. Then filter the infusion and bring to a volume of 4 liters with hot water. Add before processing liquid soap(tablespoon).
- You can use an infusion of tomato leaves. Steam 2.5-3 kg of tomato tops with boiling water (5-5.5 l). Boil the mixture for about 3 hours. Then strain the broth and dilute with water (2 parts water per part tomato infusion). Before treating the beds, add liquid soap or tar shampoo to the liquid.
- The simplest and affordable way to rid turnip plantings of glutton caterpillars - baking soda. Just sprinkle baking soda on the leaves of the plant. Soda will not cause any harm to turnips, but it is destructive to caterpillars.
Dangerous turnip diseases
Repka, like others vegetable crops, the following diseases threaten:
White rot. Culture tissues affected by fungi become watery, thin and covered with a white coating (mycelium).
Gray rot. This fungal disease is dangerous for the harvested crop. Fungi attack root crops, destroying the turnip crop.
Radish mosaic. A viral disease affects the development of turnips.
The plant stops growing, the leaves become fragile and thin, ring-shaped patterns and spots form on them. Young leaves begin to curl.
Powdery mildew. The disease affects the entire plant. The disease begins with a white powdery coating that darkens over time.
The affected areas dry out. The plants themselves begin to lag behind in development and die.
Pernosporosis. The disease affects the leaves of the vegetable.
The disease begins with the appearance of small white spots that spread over the entire leaf, turn brown and become oily.
Blackleg. The disease affects bottom part leaves and roots.
The affected areas darken and become thinner. The fruit softens and becomes covered with whitish mycelium.
When cut open, the affected turnip shows dark flesh.
What to do when you see symptoms of illness?
To protect your pet from diseases, carefully follow these recommendations:
- Follow the rules of crop rotation and agricultural technology.
- Be sure to prepare plant seeds before sowing.
- All diseased crops should be immediately removed from the beds and destroyed.
When planting turnips, soil preparation is also of great importance (complete destruction of all plant residues and fight against increased acidity soil).
In acidified areas, turnips are most susceptible to disease.
Harvesting
Well, our turnips are ripe. Root vegetables should not be left in the garden beds; ripe vegetables should be removed immediately.
A mature turnip left in the garden becomes bitter, the pulp of the fruit becomes coarse, and such a root vegetable will not be stored well.
Carefully remove the root crop from the ground and immediately cut off the tops of the plant, leaving only 1.5-2 cm of the petiole (do not touch the roots).
Only after this can the turnips be air dried. If the tops are not cut, then when dried, some of the most useful substances and vitamins will go into it, and the fruit will lose its usefulness.
If sudden frosts occur before harvesting the turnips, it is better not to touch the turnips. After the onset of a thaw, immediately remove it from the ground.
Keep harvested better in a cool place. We put the turnips in boxes and sprinkle them with sand.
Optimal plant storage temperature: 0-+1⁰ C.
You can also use plastic bags or sacks for storage.
Planting turnips, growing and caring for a fabulous garden beauty, if you know and follow all the nuances of sowing and processing, will become an interesting and enjoyable experience.
And at the end you will receive the richest harvest delicious, crunchy, juicy and sweet root vegetables.
See you soon, dear readers!
Turnip roots are tender, juicy, healthy and tasty, and growing them can be challenging.
Healthy root vegetable
Nowadays, it is rare to find this vegetable, unique in its medicinal and dietary properties, in garden beds - and it’s completely in vain!
Turnip roots contain large number vitamins, minerals and other beneficial substances, incl. succinic acid, which is a biostimulant. Turnip is useful for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, gastritis with low acidity, diseases of the biliary tract. Juice and decoction are used for coughs, bronchitis, and bronchial asthma.
The best predecessors for turnips are legumes, cucumbers and tomatoes.
Site selection
We select a site for turnips in the fall. We add humus (3-4 kg/sq. m), wood ash (30-40 g/sq. m), you can add complex fertilizers (10-15 g/sq. m). Then we dig to a depth of 25-30 cm.
Turnips can be sown in 2 terms: very early in the spring, as soon as the soil is suitable, for summer consumption, or in the second half of summer (in the first ten days of July) for winter storage and consumption.
Prepare the ground
Turnip seeds are small, so the soil must be prepared especially carefully, all lumps must be broken up. We prepare a bed 1-1.2 m wide, placing the rows at intervals of 35-40 cm.
If the soil is dry, the furrows must be watered; then we start sowing. The sowing depth should be 2-3 cm.
Regular care
Tender and juicy turnip shoots are a delicacy for the cruciferous flea beetle. To protect them, wood ash is used. You can also apply covering material to the bed after sowing.
The first thinning is carried out in the phase of 1-2 true leaves at a distance of 5 cm, and after 2 weeks - the second and final thinning, at a distance of 10-12 cm.
You need to water regularly, not allowing the soil to dry out, and carry out weeding and loosening in a timely manner.
Varieties for Siberia
Excellent varieties of domestic selection have been released in the Novosibirsk region.
Petrovskaya 1. The root crop is flat-round, yellow, delicate consistency, weighing 100-200 g. The pulp is creamy-yellow. The period from mass germination to harvesting is 75-80 days. Stores well in winter.
Orbit . Mid-season variety. The period from full germination to the beginning of technical ripeness is 86 days. The root crop is round, white, with an average weight of 390 g, completely immersed in the soil. The pulp is white, tender, juicy, of good taste.
Comet . Mid-season variety. The period from full germination to the beginning of technical ripeness is 83 days. The root crop is elongated, white, weighing 250 g, completely immersed in the soil. The pulp is white, juicy, good taste.
Moon . Mid-season variety. The period from full germination to the beginning of technical ripeness is 86 days. The root crop is round, yellow, with an average weight of 200 g, completely immersed in the soil. The pulp is yellow, sweet, crispy.
Snow White . Mid-season variety. The period from full germination to the beginning of technical ripeness is 54 days. The root crop is round, white, with an average weight of 150-200 g. The pulp is white. Taste qualities excellent.
Golden Ball . Mid-season variety. The period from full germination to the beginning of technical ripeness is 54 days. The root crop is round, yellow in color, with an average weight of 200-250 g. The pulp is yellow, tender. The taste is excellent.