With the advent of new varieties of vegetable crops, turnip has lost its popularity and today is a rarity in the household. Her culinary universality is still remembered by the older generation.
And young people do not even know about the benefits of vegetables, enriched with antioxidants, succinic acid, calcium and vitamins. In an abandoned state and breeding work, so you have to be content with species that were arbitrarily bred by our ancestors.
Further in the article we will tell what a turnip is, how to successfully choose planting material, and analyze the best varieties of plants.
Tips for choosing
Depending on the type and variety, the vegetable is different in shape, color and smell. For example, yellow turnip has a very juicy core with coarse dietary fibers and a pronounced taste.
And white, on the contrary, is distinguished by soft delicate fibers and strong aroma. This variety is recommended for baby food, because it is easily digestible. 
Did you know? Turnip spread from the West Asian countries and was cultivated more than 4 thousand years ago. Initially, the fruit was considered the food of slaves, as evidenced by the findings of archaeologists at the Egyptian pyramids. And only the ancient Romans, regardless of social status, served baked vegetables on the table.
When choosing fruits they must be carefully examined. Experienced housewives advise:
- Pay attention to the appearance of the fetus. Do not buy specimens whose skin is damaged or uneven, with suspicious stains.
- Choose only ripe vegetables. As a rule, they are heavier than the immature.
- Buy a small turnip, which is placed in the palm. Larger samples have a bitter aftertaste.
- Make a purchase during the ripening period of the fruit, when there is reasonable prices for them and there is an abundant range on the market.
- If you buy a root vegetable in late August or early September, choose copies of the tops. According to her condition it is easy to guess the time of digging the fruit. Acquired turnips in the autumn can be stored in the cellar until the spring.
The best varieties of turnips
The peculiarities of taste, size and number of fruits, terms of their ripening are determined by several varieties of a forgotten vegetable.
Sweet
The variety is very fond of children. And also it is used for diet. The turnip of sweet varieties is distinguished by tender pulp, the taste of which has absolutely no bitterness and astringency. The best of them are:
Important! Turnip prefers light loam and well-lit areas.
- "White ball" - it is characterized by stable fruiting and medium ripeness, its white roots and young foliage are used as food;
- Golden Ball - stably gives orange-yellow round vegetables weighing up to 150 g, cold-resistant and unpretentious in the care;
- "Snow White" - White-milk turnips early ripen, weighs up to 80 g, has a crispy juicy flesh, is very winter-hardy and easily adapts to the shade.
At your summer cottage you can also grow such root vegetables: potatoes, beets, carrots, radishes.
Yield
In the classical version, high yields of turnip are obtained by the owners only after they have fertilized the vegetable garden with manure before sowing and have a reusable mineral dressing.
But at one time the breeders worked on the breeding of unpretentious varieties, the yield of which is within 4 kg per 1 square meter. Among them:
- "Petrovskaya - 1" - has juicy fruits of a rounded flat shape with a dense, juicy core of ideal taste;
- "Snow Maiden" - possesses white root crops with sweet pulp, weighing up to 60 g, are not stored for a long time;
- "Tokyo" - is a lettuce variety, its foliage is used for therapeutic purposes to normalize blood formation.
Did you know? In ancient times, turnips were planted not by the usual scattering of seeds, but by spitting. This agrotechnical preference was due to the tiny size of the seed. The work was not easy and did not work for everyone. Consequently, the best plevalschiki always enjoyed great prestige in the village.
Large fruit
The average sizes of root crops reach 100-300 g. Large-fruited varieties are represented by varieties:
- "White Night" - one turnip weighs about half a kilo;
- "White ball" - fruit weight up to 600 g;
- "Snowball" - up to 550 g;
- "Russian size" - It is considered a giant, because its fruits can weigh up to 2 kg, but they can be obtained only with proper care.
Early ripening
The main difference of early varieties is their maturation in 45-60 days. They are recommended for consumption in the spring and summer seasons. The most famous among them are:
- "Geisha" - it is a salad look, which has small white fruits with a light tartness in taste, it is well adapted to drought, cold and shade, not suitable for long-term savings;
- "May Yellow Greenhead" - it is characterized by tender yellow, juicy root crops reaching consumer ripeness in 55-60 days after planting;
- "Granddaughter" - fruits yellow vegetables of small size, but sweet in taste, suitable for storage in winter.
Important! When growing turnip plants must be watered twice a week. Otherwise, the quality of the fruit will deteriorate significantly.
Mid-season
Harvest of this group of roots can be in the last decade of June, as well as in early July. Known:
- "Dunyasha" - is a dietary vegetable with a yellow skin and tender milk flesh;
- "Gribovskaya" - it is distinguished by large fruits, in which the top is purple and the bottom is yellowish;
- "Nurse" - This is a very fleshy vegetable with a dirty yellow skin and milky-white flesh, used in raw form and for culinary processing.
Late
Late ripening varieties are harvested from the garden about 90 days after sowing. They are credited with:
- "Comet" - is a delicious root crops of unusual conical shape, designed for long-term storage;
- "Pull-pull" - These are round vegetables with yellowish sweet pulp;
- "Orbit" - fruits abundantly, large crop, white, juicy, with pleasant tartness, suitable for laying for the winter.
Did you know? Irish and British for a long time used turnips for Halloween lanterns in the form of a luminous head. In the XIX century, the pumpkin appeared as an alternative to the root crop, completely eclipsing it.
Features of planting and growing turnip
When you already know all the nuances about the choice of root crops and varieties, let's look at the subtleties of planting turnips.
For its full growing season, sowing is worth planning on light substrates with neutral acidity. Ideal for flat terrain with good ambient lighting.
Consider that the culture belongs to the Cabbage family, so all types of cabbage are bad predecessors for turnips. It is advisable to pre-fertilize the plot with organic matter.
For summer consumption, grains are sown in heated land at the end of April, and for wintering - in early June. To do this, on a loose bed, shallow grooves are made at intervals of 20 cm, in which they embed a mixture of seeds and sand. 
This is done so that the crops are not too thick.
After planting, the area is covered with humus, and after 4-5 days sprinkled with wood ash on top. When the first leaves appear on the seedlings, the rows will need to be thinned out, leaving the plants every 5 cm.
Important! Young shoots are recommended to be watered through a fine sieve, otherwise the stream of water can put immature shoots.
When cultivating turnips, it is important to regularly loosen the soil, cleaning it from weeds, water it and periodically add a solution of chicken manure and boric acid to the garden bed. 
Terms of fruit harvesting depend on the characteristics of cultivars and cultivation purposes. During the summer season you can harvest 2 crops of these vegetables. After digging, they are shaken off the ground and cleaned from tops, then sent to storage.
With proper agrotechnology, up to 4 kg of root crops can be harvested from 1 square meter of bed. The older generation used them for baking, frying, stewing, salads, stews and other culinary delights. Improvise with love, and you will succeed!
