How To Grow Rutabaga From Seed

Read on to learn how to grow rutabaga from seed in your garden!

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What are Rutabagas?

Rutabagas are an old vegetable from around the middle ages. They are grown for their root which is yellowy-orange flesh hidden beneath the skin. The deeper the color, usually the more sweeter the flavor. We usually eat rutabaga with other roasted root vegetables or added to soups or stews. Another classic way of using rutabaga is to mash it with potatoes. You can mash rutabaga and carrots or add them to a boiled New England dinner!

Rutabagas take a long time to grow and are part of the cabbage or brassica family. Don’t grow them in the same place as other brassicas like cabbage or broccoli. You want to provide at least 3 years break in growing those veggies on the same ground to reduce issues with diseases and pests.

What varieties of rutabagas are there?

The humble rutabaga isn’t a very popular vegetable here in the US, unless you are in the New England or Pacific Northwest areas, it can be quite difficult to find in grocery stores to try. As a gardener, you are in luck! Many seed companies have rutabaga seeds available and some heirloom varieties of rutabaga include:

Marion
Gilfeather
Joan
American Purple Top
Major Dunne
Cairns Family Heirloom
Angela

Turnips are often lumped together with growing rutabagas. However, typically turnips are planted for a spring harvest and rutabagas are planted for a fall harvest.

When to sow rutabaga seeds

Rutabaga is best sown directly in the soil around midsummer and then allowed to mature through to fall when the first frosts arrive. Super hot weather can make your rutabagas tough and woody so try to time sowing them 90 days from your first average fall frost date.

Where to sow rutabaga seeds

Sow seeds about 4 to 8 inches apart, and ½ inch deep. Your rutabagas need space to grow and their leaves need plenty of sun to help them grow. Choose a place in your garden with plenty of sunlight although they can handle some shade. The soil wants to be rich with plenty of well-rotted compost worked into the soil before sowing the seeds. Or you can grow where peas or green manure like clover were growing in the spring.

Caring for rutabaga plants

Keep your watering consistent as your plants grow. Drought can make your rutabagas tough and woody so mulching will help keep that moisture in the soil and control weeds.

Harvesting

Mild climates might keep the rutabagas in the ground until you want to eat them but for those of us with very cold winters and a lot of snow, lifting the roots with a garden fork, or pulling them up with the help of several friends is a good option. Rutabagas store very well in the refrigerator or in a root cellar.

How to save rutabaga seeds

Rutabagas are part of the Brassica napus species which includes the Siberian kales and some species of canola or rapeseed or oil seed. If you are wanting to save seeds, and there are fields of those growing nearby or your Siberian kales are about to flower then you might need to consider using some floating row cover to prevent unwanted cross-pollination. Or just allow one crop to go to seed in your garden. For example, let the Angela rutabaga flower and seed for one year and no Siberian kale seed. The next year you can let the Siberian kale seed instead or grow another kale that isn’t going to cross-pollinate, so one that is part of the Brassica oleracea species instead.

Letting plants go to seed

These are plants that need a vernalization period of cool temperatures below 40F/4C for about 12 weeks or 3 months to trigger flowering. For some of you in a mild area, just leaving smaller, younger plants in the ground over winter will be enough. Younger plants can withstand the cold much better than fully mature plants.

In colder climates, you will need to protect the plants from the worst of the weather with lots of mulch and frost protection or lift those plants out of the ground before the hard frost in fall and store them somewhere cool and protected.

Storing and selecting over winter

If lifting the plants for storage over winter, cut the leaves off and keep a bit of stem on the plants like maybe ½ inch at most. You can store them in wood shavings and keep the roots from touching each other. You want to avoid planting out any roots that have started rotting, show signs of disease, have cracked roots, or have a root shape you are not wanting in your next plants.

Once the danger of a hard frost has passed in spring the following year, plant out your rutabagas to about 18 inches apart. Pollinators love brassica flowers and will happily pollinate the flowers and produce seeds for you to save and grow again.

Dig In and Learn More

If this post has started ideas for your garden, be sure to check out these related posts and helpful books that have inspired my homestead garden:

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