Why cant I grow turnips or swedes?

[matowakan]

For the last 3 years I have tried to grow turnips and swedes.
I read up on how to do it and beleive I plant them out correctly and water them.
Yet when I pull them out all I have are slightly swollen roots.
I do thin the seedlings so presume I am doing something wrong.
Any advice for next years attempt?!

[wabbit955]

i think it got to be the same reason i can not grow carrots

but me turnips are great and i just put seeds in and thin out a bit nothing special
very grown swead

[matowakan]

Must be- cos my carrots are good,both yellow and normal colour!

[Potter's Farm]

I could never grow swedes or turnips when we lived in the UK, i was on very alkaline clay soil, which should have been good for brassicas. This year they've done brilliantly. We now have the room to transplant then to correct distances which we never had before. They are about 12" apart. I'm putting it down to this and also the fact that we live on the side of what used to be a volcano and are on very fertile soil.

And my carrots are wondrful too having never done well before too.

[grahamhobbs]

Matoken, turnips and swede are surprisingly not the easiest of crops to grow for lots of people. Both suffer from a variety of pests and neither like dry weather. I would suggest trying to grow them later, sowing around July, in modules and out of the way of flea beetles or under micromesh. Keep them well watered. They won't be ready until later in the year, but then I think of them a winter veg to go in stews, etc.

[matowakan]

thanks for the advice Graham, I will try planting later next year.I too think of them as a winter veg for stews etc

[Slippery Jack]

Turnips are pretty quick growing, so you can often get a crop in both late and early in the year. I put some turnips in a few weeks ago and I planted a few more last weekend. They might get hit too hard by an early frost and come to naught, but equally, they may well provide me with some tasty winter veg. Purple-topped and green-topped varieties are generally held to be best for late sowing.

Don't neglect the spring sowing. Pests are relatively few early on in the year. Start sowing turnips in batches (maybe under cloches) as early as you dare. The seed is cheap, so you can afford a few failures. Snowball is a good variety for early sowing.

[chadspad]

Ive given up trying to grown turnips and swedes - they just end up long and thin! Carrots last year were the first productive year for me, they were multi-coloured and grew brilliantly!

[oldjerry]

Graham 's forgotten more about this sort of thing than I'll ever know,and I'm sure the water thing is significant.I have grown turnips(easy) and swede(hard) with some success,and I reckon both need really decent soil.I know that swede especially can suffer with Boron and magnesium defficiency(which would stunt their growth)but other than upping the fertility of your soil with a goodly dollop of compost I'm not sure what else you could do.Mind you, said remedy would help water retention too.
If you're desperate for swede mash,you can buy big nets for small money from Ag. Merchants in Autumn....

There's always summat you can't grow,with me it's bloody caulis,tried for years,hopeless,even those stupid Mini things from T&M that '' Anyone can grow!''..........just hopeless.