Early Turnip Greens 60 Days
A green, robust and early turnip top variety, with generous yields, grown for its young leaves and tender flower shoots, ideal for cooking.
About the variety. Highly productive, it stands out for the long period of successive harvests it provides throughout the season.
Itinerário técnico
Um guia de cultivo passo a passo, da sementeira à colheita.
Always sow direct where it is to grow, one or two centimetres deep in rows, because transplanting deforms the root. Germination takes four to seven days. Thin early, to the spacing given, once the seedlings have two true leaves: here it is the leaf and the shoot that matter, not the root, so it tolerates more density. Sow from August to October to pick turnip greens in autumn and flower shoots in late winter and early spring.
It wants loose, deep, stone free soil with no fresh manure, at a pH between 6.0 and 7.0. For leaf and shoots, cool soil with well rotted compost gives the best result. Work the ground to twenty five centimetres and break the clods down well before sowing. Rotate away from other brassicas.
It is a cool weather crop, ideal between 10 °C and 20 °C, and the leaves and shoots sweeten after a spell of cold. Strong heat makes the plant bolt too early and gives tough, hot tasting leaves. The Portuguese coast offers close to ideal conditions and allows harvests over much of the year. Inland in Portugal and Spain, concentrate the crop in autumn, winter and early spring, because from June onwards heat and long days push it to bolt and turn bitter. In France it grows easily from spring to autumn, and in Germany the whole summer works because it is rarely too hot. Light shade over the middle of the day extends the harvest in any warm climate. This is a short cycle variety, ideal for successional sowings and for using the cool windows of late winter and early autumn, before heat pushes the plant to bolt.
Do not use fresh manure or strong nitrogen feeding: that gives forked, hairy and tasteless roots. Use a bed that was composted for the previous crop and top up potassium only, with sieved wood ash, which improves sweetness and keeping quality.
Water regularly and without gaps. Alternating drought and heavy watering splits the roots and makes them fibrous and hot. Steadily moist soil gives tender sweet roots. In autumn and winter rain is usually enough; in summer water two or three times a week.
The crop germinates fast, but in the first weeks the seedling is small and loses the contest with weeds. Prepare the bed in advance, clear the first flush of weeds before sowing and hoe between the rows as soon as the rows can be seen. Hoe shallowly between the rows and never pile soil over the crown.
Flea beetle, a small jumping beetle, riddles young leaves with round holes in hot dry weather: keep the soil moist and cover with fine mesh from sowing. Cabbage white caterpillars and diamondback moth eat the leaves from within: apply Bacillus thuringiensis while the caterpillars are small and check the underside of the leaves every week. Cabbage root fly lays at the collar and the larva destroys the root: a cardboard or felt collar around the stem stops the egg laying. Grey cabbage aphid forms waxy colonies on the shoots and is dealt with using potassium soap.
Clubroot is the most serious disease: it deforms the roots, the plant wilts, and the fungus persists in the soil for close to twenty years. Prevent it with a four to five year rotation, good drainage and a pH that never drops below 6.0, corrected with lime. Alternaria makes dark concentric spots and downy mildew a grey bloom on the underside of the leaf; both like humidity, so space well and water at the base. Black rot enters at the leaf margins as a yellow V and is carried by seed and irrigation water. Clear all crop debris at the end and keep it out of the compost heap.
Pick the turnip greens young, cutting the outer leaves two centimetres above the soil and leaving the centre of the plant to resprout. The grelos are the flower shoots: cut them at fifteen to twenty centimetres, before the buds open, which is when they are tender and sweet. Cut this way they resprout and give several pickings over weeks; a shoot already in flower turns bitter. Allow about 60 days from sowing to the first harvest of this variety. The reference colour is green, and that is what tells you it is ready.
