A rustic wooden basket filled with colorful root vegetables—carrots, beets, and radishes—set on freshly dug soil with gardening tools nearby

All About: Roots

Spring
May 03, 2025•2 min read
A rustic wooden basket filled with colorful root vegetables—carrots, beets, and radishes—set on freshly dug soil with gardening tools nearby

🧬 Family Traits: What These Plants Share

Root crops thrive in cooler soil, grow slowly and steadily, and store their flavor deep underground. They’re some of the most rewarding crops for mountain gardeners—resilient, colorful, and built to last through cold snaps.

Shared characteristics:

  • Cool-season friendly

  • Direct sowing preferred (except for leeks and onions)

  • Require loose, well-drained soil and consistent moisture

  • Easy to store and preserve post-harvest

  • Roots run deep—and so does their flavor

A collage of root vegetables with soil clinging to them, labeled with traits like 'cool season', 'deep flavor', and 'long storage'

🪴 How to Grow Roots in Mountain Conditions

A mountain garden bed in early spring with row cover over freshly sown rows and labeled plant markers for carrots and beets

🌱 Seed Starting

  • Direct sow most root crops 2–4 weeks before last frost

  • Thin early and consistently to give roots room to swell

  • For leeks and onions, start indoors and transplant later

Dried radish pods on the plant, close-up of cracked open pods showing mature seeds

🌦️ Sowing & Transplanting

  • Keep soil evenly moist for good germination

  • Use row cover to protect from flea beetles and root maggots

  • Leeks: Transplant deeply into trenches for long white shanks

Hands pulling a colorful carrot from rich soil with a basket of freshly harvested root crops nearby

🍽️ Feeding & Soil Support

  • Roots prefer well-drained soil enriched with compost—not fresh manure

  • Avoid excess nitrogen (can lead to leafy tops and poor roots)

  • Mulch to retain moisture and regulate temperature

A farmhouse kitchen scene with roasted root veggies on a tray and jars of fermented radishes on the counter

✂️ Harvesting

  • Carrots, beets, and turnips: harvest when roots are usable

  • Leeks: harvest when shanks are 1–2\" thick

  • Curing: Let roots dry slightly post-harvest before storage

🥕 The Veggies in This Group

Beets

Fast-growing, cold-tolerant, and sweet when roasted.

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial—requires overwintering and isolation for seed saving.

🌱 Varieties We’re Growing:

  • Bold & Beauty Mix

  • Golden Grex

  • Kestrel

Leeks

Long-season alliums with frost tolerance and deep sweetness.

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial. Isolate for purity.

🌱 Varieties We’re Growing:

  • King Sieg

  • Lincoln

  • Siegfried Frost

Onions

Sweet and storage-worthy.

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial.

🌱 Varieties We’re Growing:

  • Yellow Sweet Spanish

Carrots

From High Desert Seeds, grown in Paonia, CO.

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial. Isolate from Queen Anne’s lace.

Radishes

🌾 Seed Saving: Easy! Edible pods before full maturity.

Turnips

🌾 Seed Saving: May behave as annual or biennial.

Celeriac

Full of roasted flavor and easier than celery.

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial.

🌱 Varieties We’re Growing:

  • Monarch

Root Parsley

🌾 Seed Saving: Biennial.

🌱 Varieties We’re Growing:

  • Arat

Garlic

Fall-planted for summer harvest.

🌾 Seed Saving: Clonal from cloves.

🍴 From Garden to Table: Why They Matter

Roots are incredibly versatile in the kitchen. Roast them, shred them, ferment them, or boil them into brothy goodness—they hold up to almost any method.

Preserving Tips:

  • Store in damp sand, crates, or plastic bags in fridge

  • Freeze grated carrots or blanched beets

  • Ferment radishes, beets, or turnips for gut-healthy sides

Key Takeaways

  • Discover top root vegetables for mountain gardeners including beets, leeks, and carrots

  • Learn planting, soil, and moisture tips tailored to high-altitude climates

  • Explore seed-saving methods for root crops like onions and radishes

  • Use frost-friendly varieties and row cover for cool-season success

  • Get post-harvest storage tips like curing, fermenting, and root cellaring

I’m Lindsay, co-owner of Wiggle Worm Gardens and a mountain vegetable gardener dedicated to helping you bring the farm-to-table movement to your backyard. Your garden should be a place where you can slow down and find abundance, balance, and connection. She takes a more hands own approach helping clients through her edible landscaping company, FSF, which focuses on helping people create beautiful edible gardens which gives you: A lifelong hobby and lifestyle you can enjoy by yourself or share with others. An investment in your landscape and an extension of your living space. An education in growing your own food and caring for the environment, starting at home. And while our Rocky Mountain soil might make us work harder for our harvest, the rewards are so much sweeter. Let’s create the vegetable garden you’ve been envisioning! Click here to learn more.

Lindsay Graves

I’m Lindsay, co-owner of Wiggle Worm Gardens and a mountain vegetable gardener dedicated to helping you bring the farm-to-table movement to your backyard. Your garden should be a place where you can slow down and find abundance, balance, and connection. She takes a more hands own approach helping clients through her edible landscaping company, FSF, which focuses on helping people create beautiful edible gardens which gives you: A lifelong hobby and lifestyle you can enjoy by yourself or share with others. An investment in your landscape and an extension of your living space. An education in growing your own food and caring for the environment, starting at home. And while our Rocky Mountain soil might make us work harder for our harvest, the rewards are so much sweeter. Let’s create the vegetable garden you’ve been envisioning! Click here to learn more.

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