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~ TURNIP Seed ~ We did a big trial of lots of turnip varieties. Of the ones that grew best , we did a tasting. This gave us the very best and tastiest varieties, which we offer here! Here is the final shortlist laid out for a 'blind' tasting session - so no one knows which is which until afterwards. When to sow? There are basically two options: To eat Turnips in summer and autumn: sow from spring to midsummer (the most normal timing) To eat Turnips in winter: You need Maincrop types. Sow midsummer, eat fresh when small in autumn, and lift for storage overwinter. = normal sowing / harvest times = alternative or experimental sowing / harvest times ~ First-early Turnips ~ for spring sowing & harvest in June 40-Day Milan White (a.k.a. "Bianca Piatta Quarantina") In our turnip trials, we found two really good first-early turnips, and this was one of them. This one is a brilliant-white flat turnip from Italy, making good 3 inch roots in about 40 days. It has a very mild, sweet flavour and a very soft texture. It's a decent size, and very quick, and we think it is a great one to sow at the start of the season for the earliest turnips of the year. Order TuBP - 2g of seed £1.35 Red Early Flat-top RED This is the other first-early that did very well. It makes nice round flat roots in about 40 days too, this time a nice deep red (or purple) all over the top where it sticks out of the soil. It is a bit denser-fleshed and stronger-tasting than the white one above, but is still nice and mild. From France, this is another excellent one to sow at the start of the season for the earliest turnips of the year. Order TuRF - 2g of seed £1.33 ~ Maincrop Turnips ~ for Spring Sowing (harvest in July) or Summer Sowing (harvest in autumn) Giant Limousin Turnip This one is reputed to be the most productive of all the old French traditional varieties. It is a maincrop round-ball white type. Sown in Spring, it will come ready a just after midsummer, at the start of July. You can also resow after midsummer for harvest in Autumn. It is famous for reaching 10 - 12 inches diameter if left in the ground, but to be honest, you might prefer them a bit smaller as Ben is holding on the left. We did try them leaving them to get bigger - and the one in the photo on the right was perfectly tender even at that size! We found this one to have a fantastic flavour that was a bit less 'turnipy' and subtly different from all the others, and it was without any hardness even when large. Do try it cooked with Paul's fabulous recipe: roast turnip wedges with mustard and honey glaze - mmmm! Order TuGL - 2g of seed £1.64 'Navet de Nancy' Turnip A classic French variety, from the seedhouse of Catros Gerand. We shall leave the description to M Vilmorin, writing in the 1870's: "A handsome form of the Early Flat Purple-Top turnip, remarkable for it's earliness, the regularity of the shape, and the very deep colour of the upper part of the root." The strain we have today is almost identical 130 years later, except that the leaves are less deeply cut . We like this one because it has a good flavour without being overwhelmingly strong, and because you can also eat the leaves cooked like spinach. (Not all varieties have nice-tasting leaves, but this one is particularly good.) Round turnip, red/purple on top. Always hugely popular Order TuNN - 2g of seed (lots!) £1.36 'Petrowski' Turnip We did some more turnip trials in 2008 , and we found this great yellow turnip from Poland. It is particularly sweet and mild, and was in great demand all summer, as it has such a great flavour. Order TuPe - 2g of seed (lots!) £1.49   We also discovered that it has leaves that are really nice cooked. So save the tops and boil them separately, like chard or any other green. Here you can see them served with butter, it makes a very nice side dish.   Saving Turnip Seed Turnips are from the Brassica family (Cabbages, Kales etc) and are really easy to save seed from. Yet another reason to learn to save Brassica seed - it's the same process for all, so learning one thing lets you save lots of different vegetable seed. We would really like to encourage you to have a go at saving seed from brassica family - that's the cabbages, kales, oriental vegetables, broccoli and turnip family. We know many of you save obvious ones like tomato and lettuce seed, but we've noticed that in the past people shied away from doing the biennial vegetables (plants that flower in their second year). Cheeringly, more people are saving brassica seed now - and we'd like to encourage you to try it too: its incredibly easy, and you get so much seed, you'll have loads to give away. There's really no need for example to buy Turnip seed from us every year at all. You just set aside a patch of good turnip plants (eat any rubbish ones) , and let them flower, making sure that you've got a reasonable number, that they are healthy, and that no other sorts are flowering nearby that might cross with them. You'll get lots of seed pods in August.   Many of the brassicas (turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers etc) will cross with each other very readily - so only let one variety flower each year. Flower stalks from a good-sized population are hung up to dry, then broken open over a bowl (or old baby bath in this case!). The bits of pod are screened out with a sieve or a soil riddle - but you can instead winnow them off in a breeze pretty easily if you prefer. Step-by-step instructions are here on our new brassica-seed-processing page. And of course, seed-saving is only possible because these are all real, non-hybrid varieties. It's pretty foolproof - why not give it a go?