Skirret

Sow the carrot-like seed half an inch deep, either directly in the bed or in a seedbed for transplanting later. Space rows 12 to 18 inches apart and thin plants to 6 inches apart in the row. Expect 6 to 8 months from sowing to harvest. Where winters are frost-free or nearly so, sow in fall instead and carry the crop through the cool season. Skirret is a hardy cool-season crop that needs 6 to 8 months to build its root cluster, so a spring sowing puts harvest in autumn just as the plant goes dormant. In mild-winter regions the summer heat is the enemy rather than the cold, which is why the season flips.

Move seedbed transplants or pieces of root division into the garden at 6 inches apart, with rows 12 to 18 inches apart, setting roots about 2 inches deep (UF/IFAS HS667). Choose a site with deep, fertile, moisture-retentive soil in full sun (RHS). Where winters are frost-free or nearly so, set plants out in fall instead and carry the crop through the cool season. Skirret carries its crop in a cluster of roots thrown from the stem base, so it needs loose depth beneath the crown and enough elbow room for that cluster to fill out rather than fight a neighbor. The season flips in mild-winter regions for the same reason it does at sowing: there the summer heat is the enemy rather than the cold, and UF/IFAS directs Florida growers to plant in fall.

On clumps you left in the ground over winter, cut the old stems back in early spring before new growth pushes. The plant throws 3 to 4 foot stems that die back and collapse over the crown, and clearing them lets you see the new shoots and gives the emerging growth light and air.

Keep the soil moisture-retentive and water during dry spells across the growing season. Do not let the bed run dry for long stretches while the roots are bulking. Skirret roots already carry a tough woody core, and a plant checked by drought puts its energy into fiber rather than the sweet white flesh around that core. Roots grown dry come up stringy and small.

Check plants over the season for stem and bulb eelworm, and look for vole runs and gnawed roots at the crown. Skirret is otherwise generally disease-free, so do not spray it on a schedule. The root cluster sits shallow at the stem base, which puts it within easy reach of voles, and stem and bulb eelworm moves through the crown tissue. Neither problem announces itself above ground until the damage is done.

When you lift a dormant clump, divide it: replant some sections at about 2 inches deep on the same 6 inch spacing and keep the rest to eat. Save the crowns with visible shoot buds for replanting and eat the fattest roots. Skirret is perennial and the clump multiplies into several crowns, so the harvest and the replanting are one job. Division also keeps a strain going true, which seed will not do.

Wait until the tops have died back and the plant is dormant, then cut the stems back and fork up the whole root cluster. Roots run 6 to 8 inches long and hold in the ground through winter, so lift as you need them rather than all at once. Cut the tough fibrous core out before cooking, not after. The sugars that give skirret its name move into the roots as the plant shuts down for winter, so a dormant root is a sweet root. The core turns nearly impossible to remove once cooked, which is why it comes out on the board.