Purple Top Turnip

Brassica rapa subsp. rapa 'Purple Top White Globe'

vegetable

Purple Top White Globe is the standard old-fashioned garden turnip, a smooth round root with crisp white flesh and bright purple-red shoulders where the top pushes above the soil into the sun. Mild and faintly sweet when grown well, it is a fast, cold-hardy cool-season root maturing in about 55 days, and it is really two crops in one, since its tender young leaves make excellent cooked greens. Like other turnips it grows best in the cool of spring and fall and sweetens after a touch of frost, making the autumn-sown crop the prize of the two.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Peas — Fix nitrogen and share cool-season beds
• Sweet Alyssum — Attracts aphid-eating hoverflies
• Onions — Scent helps deter pests
• Nasturtium — Trap crop for aphids and flea beetles

❌ Keep away from

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Flea beetles →

  Row cover seedlings, which are most vulnerable young

• Cabbage root maggot →

  Use row cover and rotate brassica-family roots

• Aphids →

  Hose off colonies and encourage ladybugs with flowers

🌾 Harvest & storage

Pull turnip roots once they reach usable size, ideally two to three inches across, when they are tender and mild; left larger they turn woody, strong-flavored, and fibrous, so harvest a little early rather than too late. A light fall frost sweetens both the roots and the greens, so the autumn crop is worth waiting on until hard freezes. Harvest the greens young and tender for cooking. Turnips lose moisture quickly and do not store long, so keep roots and greens separately in the refrigerator and use within a week or two.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

The turnip is a true two-for-one vegetable nutritionally. The roots are low in calories and a good source of vitamin C with potassium and fiber, while the leafy greens are far richer, very high in vitamins A, C, and K and a good source of calcium and folate. As a brassica the whole plant also supplies the protective glucosinolate compounds common to the cabbage family, making a single planting an unusually efficient cool-season crop.