Now is the time to embrace root vegetables – hardy, delicious, and packed with vitamins

IT’S AT this time of the year, when the skies turn sullen and the rain pours down, that root vegetables – the ugly sisters of the vegetable world – come into their own. Even then, a freshly dug parsnip, with its crooked, soil-encrusted root, is not a thing of beauty.

Nor, for that matter, is celeriac, with its calloused, warty, whiskery flesh, or Jerusalem artichokes (“fartichokes”) with their misshapen, knobbled roots.

And while the ruby-veined stems and leaves of beetroot are quite lovely to look at, the root itself (at least before the wine-red flesh has been revealed by cooking) is just as the writer Jane Grigson damningly described it: “not . . . inspiring”.

The nation’s darling, the potato, is no beauty queen either, while the Irish turnip (in fact a swede) is just plug ugly. All of which leaves us with the true turnip and the carrot as the relative lovelies of the group.

Well, “Plain Janes” most of them may be, but root vegetables, just like Cinderella, scrub up exceedingly well. Not only that but, because the largest and most important part of any root vegetable is below ground, they’re also generally more tolerant of the kind of autumn frosts that make a blackened mash of their more glamorous above-ground relatives.

All of which means that although it may be early November, gardeners Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn are still harvesting beetroot, celeriac, potatoes and parsnips in the OPWs walled kitchen garden in the Phoenix Park while they’ve only just finished the last of their carrots, swedes and turnips.

“We did our second sowing of beetroot back in mid-July, which is what we’re harvesting now. Growth has slowed up a lot lately and the leaves have got frosted in the cold weather but we’re still getting a great crop”, explains Meeda. “We’re growing three different varieties, Detroit 2 Crimson Globe, Solo – a monogerm variety that, unlike other beetroot, produces just one seedling per seed – and Cylindra – a variety with long, cylindrical roots that’s ideal for pickling or baking in the oven.”

Celeriac, in contrast to beetroot, is a root crop that needs plenty of time in the ground, as otherwise its roots (technically not a root but a swollen stem) never swell to any usable size. The OPW gardeners’ celeriac plants were sown back in early March in a heated glasshouse before being transplanted outdoors after all risk of frost had passed.

A shallow rooting plant, celeriac requires constant moisture and regular feeding throughout its long growing season. Even then, the OPW gardeners have discovered that some varieties are more demanding than others.

“We grew two varieties this year, Prinz and Prague Giant,” says Brian. “Of the two, we were expecting Prague Giant to be really vigorous, very large and productive, but in the end Prinz seems to be the more reliable variety and coped brilliantly with the drier summer. It just did its own thing while Giant Prague needed more looking after.

Meeda agrees, and adds: “you really had to keep on taking the outer leaves off Giant Prague to keep it fattening up. Even then, we found that it has much more of a tendency to bolt than Prinz, and I had to keep nipping out any long shoots. To be honest, I don’t think we’d bother growing it again”.

Which is not something that she or indeed any Irish gardener could say about the Teagasc-bred Rooster potato, a variety that the UK Potato Council’s database (potato.org.uk) describes as “an excellent all-round potato combining beautiful taste with good yields, and perfect for mashing and roasting”.

Even now, in late November, there are still a few stalwart rows of this Irish-bred potato in the walled garden, although technically they should have been lifted and stored away weeks ago. “But we’ve got nowhere to store them”, explains Meeda with a resigned shrug.

“So we’ve just left them in the ground, to lift as the [next-door] Phoenix Cafe needs them. We’re taking out two crates a week, so they won’t last much longer. Which is just as well because we’re already noticing a lot of slug damage in comparison to those lifted earlier this summer.”

But if any one plant symbolises the tenacity and toughness of root vegetables, as well as the importance of planting for a wintry day, it is the parsnips now being harvested in the walled garden. Sown outdoors back in mid-February, just before a series of bitter frosts and icy snowstorms, the seedlings of the parsnip Gladiator appeared seven weeks later, in early April, and have now grown into a fine crop. “If we wanted, we could leave them in the ground right through the winter as frost will make them even sweeter and improve the flavour but we want to clear and manure this part of the garden over the next few weeks, so were lifting them instead,” says Brian.

While there are those who will never shake off a childhood dislike of some root vegetables (“a plate of hate” is how cookery writer Nigel Slater describes one school dinner of boiled turnips), they are in fact both versatile and nourishing.

Parsnips, for example are packed full of Vitamins C, B3 (in the form of niacin) and E as well as potassium and fibre, while carrots are a rich source of Vitamin A (good for night vision, just as you were told as a child). Ditto for the swede (the “Irish turnip”), while the true turnip contains Vitamins A, C, E and B6 along with folate, copper, calcium and dietary fibre. Beetroot, too is considered an all-round superfood and immune-enhancer, while potatoes are mood-enhancers (something to do with serotonin levels and a chemical called tryptophan).

So it’s no wonder that these vegetables are so strongly associated with herbal remedies, or as cures or treatments for a variety of ailments including dysentery (parsnip), rheumatism (celeriac), high blood pressure and cancer (beetroot). Use them roasted, baked, boiled or in nutritious winter soups.

But remember Jane Grigson’s words of warning (she was referring to parsnips but it’s true of nearly all root vegetables): “Never serve them straight from the water, any more than you would appear at the dinner table dripping from a bath. Only asparagus and Aphrodite can get way with it”.

WHAT TO: sow, plant and do now

Sow:(Outdoors) broad beans, hardy peas, field beans as green manure (Under cover) some COCA leaves

Plant :(Outdoors) Garlic, spring cabbage, autumn onion sets, rhubarb sets.

Do:Continue harvesting and storing, clear, weed and manure beds, order fruit trees.

• The OPW's Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4.00pm

• Next week Urban Farmer will cover "the big tidy-up"

• Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer