Vegetable · Brassicaceae
When to plant turnips
Fast, cold-tolerant and better from an autumn sowing than a spring one.
Sow direct
4 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
40-55
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make turnips plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 4 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 40–55 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 21 days for a continuous supply.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop.
Getting the timing right
Autumn crops sown eight to ten weeks before first frost are sweeter and less prone to woodiness than anything grown into summer heat.
Frost tolerance
Tolerates -8C. Roots hold in the ground well past the first frosts.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -8°C (17.6°F)17.6°F (-8°C).