If you want to plant horseradish, now is the time! Spring is the season—but only in places where winters freeze hard. Here’s how to plant, grow, and harvest horseradish in your garden.
An exceptionally hardy perennial, horseradish belongs to the venerable plant family Cruciferae (“cross-bearing,” for the tiny, cross-shape flowers characteristic of all members of this family), which includes cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, among other commonly-grown vegetables.
Horseradish sends up coarse, elongated, emerald green leaves that resemble those of common curly dock. This foliage, which rarely grows more than 2 feet tall, belies the real action underground: In rich soil, the fleshy horseradish taproot can penetrate as deep as 10 feet if left undisturbed for several years and will send out a tangled mass of horizontal secondary roots and rootlets over a diameter of several feet.
If severed from the main taproot, any rootlet can give rise to a new plant; this is one way to start a crop. Aspiring horseradish growers can also obtain root cuttings—sometimes called “starts” or “sets”—from seed companies and from many local garden supply stores.
Horseradish Benefits
Horseradish roots pack a nutritional wallop that few cultivated plants, and certainly no other root crop, can match. The freshly grated root contains more vitamin C than most common fruit, including oranges. The root is rich in calcium, iron, thiamine, potassium, magnesium, trace minerals, and proteins, yet desirably low in phosphorus and sodium. Horseradish is 20 times richer in calcium than the potato (with skin) and contains nearly four times the vitamin C and three times the iron.
How Horseradish Gets Its Bite
Horseradish gets its characteristic bite from the interaction of two compounds, isolated from each other in separate cells of the plant. Intact roots and leaves have no horseradish-y smell but must be bruised, chopped, shredded, or chewed to bring the two compounds together. The finer the grating or grinding, the more pungent and richly flavored the root becomes.
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Horseradish Root is Very Small
I see photos of horseradish roots that appear to be two inches across. My roots are mostly only the size of a pencil or maybe my finger. How do I get larger roots?
Winter time
Hello I have a question I hope you can answer. This is my first year and I just planted my horseradish a month ago. We live in Ontario Canada and winter is fast approaching us. So my question is can I leave my plant in the ground for the winter? Or will this hurt the plant?
Horseradish
I can't grow horseradish here in Florida; too warm. But, when I lived in the state of Maryland, I planted a single piece of horseradish left over from my Passover Seder Plate. I just dug a small hole and covered it over... Much to my surprise, by the time the bush was about 3 feet tall, it was covered by the most beautiful white, sweet smelling flowers on every branch... Eventually I dug up 2 pieces of horse-radish in November and had the hottest radish of my life time. Never tried it again, but moved to Florida with little space on my property for any vegetable gardens. Do I ever miss my gardens, but now have lettuce, arugula, radishes and cucumbers growning in the old recycle bins. I am 91 and still planting when necessary.
Horseradish
Be careful where you grow, it spreads....
Would like to know how t get rid of it. Every Spring and Fall I'm digging it up and throwing it out. DO NOT put in compost bin.
The remaining shoots come up the next year