Few Americans eat or grow rutabagas these days. Sometimes called Swedes, these once cherished storage crops fell by the wayside as grocery stores and refrigerated shipping stepped onto the landscape. We find that these under-appreciated deserve a spot in our gardens and diet. Here’s why you may want to consider adding your rutabagas to your home garden this fall. Plus, some growing advice and how to put them to good use in the kitchen.

Why Grow Rutabagas

Rutabagas may not be beautiful vegetables to look at, but they do have a lot going for them! Here are a few of our favorite things about these root crops:

Rutabagas can increase your self-sufficiency. 

If you garden just for flavor and fun, don’t worry about this one! However, we know that many of our customers are homesteaders, environmentalists, and foodies looking to produce more of their own food to keep their diet local. If that’s you, rutabagas are a great choice. Rutabagas are great nutrient-dense staple crops that offer a large amount of food for the space they take up in the garden.

Rutabagas have an excellent storage life.

Rutabagas are an ideal fall crop because, unlike many, they can stay in the ground long before they get pithy. Once harvested, you can store them in a fridge or root cellar for 4 to 5 months.

Rutabagas are incredibly versatile. 

I encourage people to think of rutabagas as their own vegetable rather than a potato substitute. While they are excellent mashed, they don’t really taste like potatoes. I love them in soups, grated raw into salads, and even in cake!

Rutabagas are easy to grow.

Like any crop, rutabagas perform best under certain conditions, but we’ve found them to be pretty forgiving. They’re also much more cold-tolerant than many garden vegetables, allowing you to enjoy a longer season.

How to Grow Rutabagas

Rutabagas are pretty easy crops to grow, but there are a few things to consider when planting, caring for, harvesting, and storing your crop.

Planting

If you have ever grown turnips, you probably know how to grow rutabagas; they grow very similarly. In the Southeast, we recommend planting rutabagas as a fall crop.

Sow your rutabagas about 8 to 10 weeks before your first estimated frost to give them a good start before cold weather sets in. Don’t sow too early. Sustained temperatures over 80°F may cause them to bolt. 

Rutabagas prefer full sun but will tolerate partial shade. Ideally, they should get at least 6 hours of sunlight per day. Direct sow your rutabagas into a bed with loose, well-drained soil. If you have heavy clay, add some compost and broad fork the bed to loosen the soil.

Sow seeds about 1/2 inch deep, 1 inch apart in rows 12 to 16 inches apart.

Care 

Thinning is essential to rutabaga care! Rutabagas must be thinned within their first month of growth, or they won’t bulb properly. Nobody enjoys thinning, but if you don’t do it, it could ruin your harvest. Thin rutabagas to 8 inches apart.

Some folks have pest issues with rutabagas in the first few weeks. In this case, we usually recommend a floating row cover. It’s a great way to exclude pests without using pesticides. 

Consistent watering is also essential for rutabagas. For the best harvests, you never want the soil to dry out. The old rutabaga adage is “If in doubt, water.”

You also want to keep the weeds at bay and mulch around your rutabagas as soon as possible. The mulch will help suppress weeds and keep the soil cool.

Harvest

Rutabaga greens are delicious, much like turnip greens. You can harvest them whenever they are reasonably sized. To encourage continued growth, avoid taking all the leaves from one plant. 

Rutabagas can become massive, but we recommend harvesting the bulbs when they are 3 to 6 inches in diameter for the best flavor. You can keep them in the ground for a long time in late fall and winter, as their growth slows in the short days and cool weather. However, you should harvest them before temperatures drop below 20°F.

Storage

After harvest, you can store your rutabagas in a fridge or root cellar for up to 5 months.

First, cut the tops to about 1 inch above the bulb and wash off any loose soil. Allow the rutabagas to dry. If you’re putting them in the fridge, you can pack them into bags.

To store them in a root cellar or similar area like a garage or basement, pack them in containers of moist sand or sawdust so they aren’t touching. It’s not possible for everyone, but ideal storage conditions for rutabagas are between 90 and 95% humidity and cold but above freezing.

Using Rutabagas

• Experiment with rutabaga greens this fall in place of turnip or collard greens.
• Make Cornish pasties, a traditional British pastry, often filled with rutabaga.
• Make a traditional jack o’lantern. Rutabagas were carved on Halloween long before pumpkins!
• Bake a rutabaga spice cake with a warm, nutty flavor that’s perfect for fall!
• Try rutabaga noodles with a veggie spiralizer.
• Lastly, for the homesteaders and small farmers, rutabagas have traditionally been used as livestock fodder. They can be a helpful crop in years with poor hay harvests.

Each spring, most gardeners give their soil a bit of attention. We add compost or amendments around planting time, hoping to sustain the seeds and transplants we put in the ground. As the harvests are hopefully rolling in in July and August, we really get to see how our soil is doing. Are our plants yellowing and showing a lack of nutrients? Are our heavy clay soils compacted and problematic for carrots? Is our sandy soil lacking organic matter necessary to hold moisture? Do our tomatoes have blight? These are some of the few things we may start to see. These observations mean it’s a great time to improve our soil health. Here are a few tips to get started with summer soil building:

The Golden Rule for Soil Building: Add Organic Matter

No matter what your soil is like—compacted clay, dry and sandy, or lacking in nutrients—the best thing you can do is add organic matter. Organic matter contains nutrients plants need to survive, helps build soil structure, holds moisture in dry soils, and helps wet soils drain better. There’s nothing it can’t do! 

How To Add Organic Matter:

There are several ways to add organic matter to the garden. When gardeners first get started, they often buy a load of finished compost, which can be pricey. Generally, the goal is to add at least one inch of compost to each bed per year to help replenish what we’ve taken. However, there are ways you can add organic matter without buying in compost:

• Sow late summer and fall cover crops like buckwheat, iron and clay peas, winter wheat, and clover.
• Add animal manure from trusted sources (some animal manure may be contaminated with herbicides and other chemicals from the hay and feed they eat).
• Use thick layers of natural mulch that will break down over the season, including straw, old leaves, or woodchips.
• Make your own compost from vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grounds, leaves, brown cardboard, etc. 
• Try chicken composting or vermicomposting. 
• Make biochar and add it to your garden beds or compost.
• Add wood ashes from your campfire pit or woodstove to your garden beds. 

Adding organic matter can be challenging, and buying compost can be expensive. Start small! Small, well-maintained gardens rich with organic matter and nutrients will often be as productive as larger, less cared-for plots.

Other Ways To Build Soil Health This Summer

While organic matter is one of the best ways to care for your soil, it isn’t the only way. Here are a few other steps you can take this time of year to improve your garden for next spring. 

Sketch out, photograph, or record your plantings.

Soil-borne diseases and pests are common afflictions in gardens of the Southeast. A great way to mitigate these issues to some extent is to rotate your crops by family on a three-year rotation. This means you avoid planting anything from one plant family, such as the nightshades or Solanaceae, including eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, tobacco, and tomatillos, in the same bed for at least three years.

Summer is a great time to record what your garden layout looked like in 2024. Come spring, it can be a real challenge to remember what exactly was planted where. Take plenty of photos, sketch your layout, or take notes in an app to ensure next season’s garden planning is a breeze!

Get your soil tested.

Late winter and early spring mean an influx of soil samples for many labs and extension agencies. By sending a sample now, you can ensure you get and understand results in plenty of time to start making changes for next year. 

Minimize soil disturbance.

Disturbing your soils can contribute to compaction, kill beneficial insects, fungi, and microbes, and cause moisture loss. Avoid tilling when possible, opting for lower-impact equipment like broad forks.

Avoid bare soils.

We never want to leave the garden naked! Make sure your soil is covered whenever possible. Use natural mulches and cover crops like those we mentioned above whenever possible. These not only add organic matter to the soil but also keep soil temperatures cool, reduce erosion, and provide habitat for beneficial insects and microbes.

Eliminate compaction.

Some soils, like clay, are easier to compact than others, but all can suffer from compaction. No matter what soil type you have, you can minimize compaction in a few simple ways. First, use a no-till or reduced tillage system. Second, eliminate traffic in the garden beds whenever possible. Create permanent beds with paths between them that allow you to work the soil without standing in it. Lastly, avoid working in wet soils, especially with tractors and other equipment. 

This summer has been a tough one for gardeners and crops! Any weaknesses in our garden’s soil health have become more and more apparent as we face week after week of hot, dry weather. If you notice your soil isn’t as healthy as you would like, now is a great time to take action. Ordering some cover crops, starting a compost pile, or planning a no-till system can help you drastically improve your production in 2025.