How to Grow Turnips in the Summer

Turnips grow with other early-season vegeatbles like potatoes, peas, radishes and carrots.

Turnips grow as hardy root crops in home gardens, and make valuable additions to early spring, fall and winter gardens with their frost-hardy constitutions. Like all vegetables, turnips need full sun, adequate drainage and the right soil nutrition to grow and thrive. Unlike some more traditional summertime plants, though, turnips do best in temperatures between 60 and 70 degrees F, and so require and early start. Plant your turnips in an early spring garden and nurture them through spring and early summer growing seasons to gather a summertime turnip harvest.

Things You'll Need

• Garden fork
• Organic compost
• Fertilizer
• Mulch

Instructions

1. Start turnips as early as possible in spring to ensure good establishment for summer growing and harvest. Begin your preparation 80 days before the last predicted frost in your area, to get turnip seeds into the ground when temperatures are 40 to 50 degrees F.

2. Put the turnips in your established garden, in a spot that gets full sun in early spring and summer. Make sure that the site gets good drainage in case of springtime rainstorms. Standing water leads to turnip rotting and failure.

3. Dig into the top 5 inches of soil to loosen it -- compacted soil leads to poor turnip formation. Add 2 inches of organic compost to the soil to maintain good soil fertility and texture, and to keep the soil loose during turnip growth. Add 10-10-10 fertilizer to the top 2 inches of soil to increase the nutrition for the new plants.

4. Plant turnip seeds 1/2 inch deep, at 1 inch per seed. Leave 12 to 24 inches of space between the rows for growing and gardening. Water the patch with 2 inches of water to settle the soil around the seeds and encourage germination.

5. Spread 2 to 3 inches of organic mulch between the rows to keep the soil moist and cool for turnip growth. Maintain this layer throughout the growing season to keep weeds down. Put the turnips on a schedule of 2 inches of water a week, and don't let them go dry.

6. Thin the seedlings to 2 to 4 inches when they're 4 inches tall to give them more room to grow.

Tips & Warnings

• Harvest turnips when they reach 2 to 3 inches in diameter, or based on maturity dates. Don't leave the turnips in the ground past their maturity dates, as old turnips grow tough and bitter.

• Turnips take anywhere from 30 to 100 days to grow to harvest, depending on cultivar.

References

• University of Illinois Extension; Watch Your Garden Grow - Turnip/Rutabaga; Ron Wolford, et al.
• Purdue University Center for New Crops and Food Products; Alternative Field Crops Manaul: Turnip; D.J. Undersander, et al.
• University of Minnesota Extension; Growing Carrots and Other Root Crops in the Home Garden; Vincent A. Fritz; 2009