Radical Radicles

Last year, when the last of the produce had been gathered from our garden, instead of letting the boxes lay empty and bare, Dad decided to plant some late fall/winter plants. We scattered a few boxes with spinach seeds and worked up others to hold some late lettuce. Dad had already informed us that we would plant some turnips, but everyone was surprised when we found that six of our garden boxes had been prepared and planted with the globular radicles.

We recently had not planted nor harvested many turnips. However, we all watched and waited to see what would come to fruition from this year’s enterprise. All throughout the year, the garden had been in my charge and still was so when we decided to try late planting.

In the beginning of the colder season, the boxes did not call for visits from me every day, like they had in the summer. Nevertheless, I kept an occasional eye on the progress of the newly planted seedlings. The spinach and the lettuce grew sparsely, but we were able to have a few salads from them. The turnips, however, grew and grew and grew some more until those six boxes in the garden were probably the greenest vegetation on our farm.

Turnip greens store tons of vitamins A and C. The vitamin A from the turnip is great for vision improvement and also for strengthening the immune system. The vitamin C it provides is used by our body in building blood vessels, bone, and cartilage. Since our turnip greens grew so profusely and suddenly, we chose not to eat any of them and waited instead for the purple and white topped globes to form. The turnip bulbs contain lesser amounts of the same vitamins.

Before we knew it, the turnips were ready for harvesting. All throughout December we were able to enjoy the fruit of our labor in a couple of different ways. Mashed turnips ended up being our favorite way to fix and eat these root stock. When the cold weather set in, the turnips still lived on. Now in the first month of the new year, we are still harvesting produce from these radical radicles!

~Halayah