Juicy things to enjoy through the winter

[dforrest]

I’m trying to plan out a brand new and very small raised bed garden. I’m in the north of Spain, so I’ve got weather like the south of England but perhaps +3 or 4 degrees C and perhaps a tiny bit more sun.

I am a fresh veg juice fan and would like to keep in it using my own veg as year-round as possible.

One of the things that makes a good juice is a vegetable that has quite a bit of water in it but does not have a very strong flavour. Classics are cucumber and celery, which juice up a treat.

So with luck I will be in cucumbers into October, and celery into December, but from January to May I’m really at a loss.

Any ideas for a juicy, neutral-tasting veg (a tuber I would suppose?) that overwinters well? In the ground ideally, but second choice I could try to improvise a root cellar in a corner of my very crowded basement space, already likely to be overflowing with beetroot and carrots.

Speaking of, I would love to know what I can leave in the ground successfully over winter.

Temperatures here are unlikely to get below -5 or at the most -7C.

[dforrest]

PS – I would love to know if the following things might be appropriate (juicy and mild-flavoured) as I’m a newbie gardener and haven’t tried a lot of things:
— Swedes (how do they taste raw?)
— Turnips (some variety that’s mild-tasting when raw?)
— Kohl rabi (no idea how juicy or how strong-tasting; plus, can you overwinter in the ground?)
— Celeriac (also no idea how juicy, how strong-tasting, or whether you can leave in the ground all winter)
— Yacon (how much juice + can you leave it in the ground all winter?)
— Anything else?

[Plot 33]

Speaking of, I would love to know what I can leave in the ground successfully over winter.

The obvious thing that occurred to me are parsnips. Then I wondered if you can drink parsnip juice? A quick google reveals ….YES!

I am a Vitamix fan (super blender) rather than a juicer. I used to have a juicer but found the cleaning a bit of a faf. Having said that, the pulp from a juicer would be great for the compost heap, so you can’t have it all ways.

I make a green juice/smoothie from Kale/Spinach/ Apple & Celery. I find celery quite peppery. A good carrot smoothie can be made with the addition of apple & ginger. The same recipes can be used for juicing. I’m now looking forward to adding parsnips to my blender….better sow a few more rows or we won’t have enough for our Sunday roasts

[dforrest]

Who would ever have thought? Parsnip juice! But now that you mention it, it actually sounds nice. Your smoothie recipes and my juice recipes sound quite similar — delicious, aren’t they? And they really make you feel like dynamite!

Going from the sweet parsnip to the presumably peppery extreme, I’ve found a bit of info on turnip juice, which apparently is the “national drink” in Turkey. The article I saw said it seems to be an acquired taste…. Not much luck fininding anything on swede/rutabaga juice. I suppose that’s an experiment that will have to happen, even though it does sound a bit disastrous. But who knows.

Back to overwintering parsnips, I’ve read they get woody and presumably dry if you leave them in the ground “too long.” Do people agree that’s true? And how long is too long? February? June?

[charles]

Yes parsnips are delicious in smoothies, so are beetroot.
As for “going woody in the ground”, that seems bizarre to me, they keep moister in soil and the only reason to remove them before winter is in heavy soils where they risk developing canker.

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