Roots are the plant structure that is beneath the soil, the roots serve several purposes, one is to hold the plant in place, it also provides the rest of the plant with water and nutrients from the soil, and this keeps the plant alive. Also roots store food for the plant, in some plants the root is tender and flavored so humans can and will eat them, these are the plants we call root vegetables. These root structures fall into three types, the tap root like the carrot, the bulb such as onions and the tuber such as potatoes.
To define these three types in simple terms is as follows: Tubers are a part of the root system that the plant developed specifically to store food, unlike the tap root types in which is the main root of the plant that holds in the ground or bulbs which is a storage unit for the plant when dormant, a bulb is an underground stem that stores food and the roots are attached to it, although botanically the tubers and bulbs are not roots, they are classified as root vegetables because the part we eat grows underground.
These root structures are designed by nature to store food for the plant over winter; most that use the tap root are biennials, the plant stores food in the root to keep it alive during the winter and the plant then sprouts in the spring, producing a flower and seeds, our common bulb vegetable, onions, being the same, although some of the other varieties of onions we will discuss are perennials. Plants with tubers are mostly annuals and the tubers are used to sprout a new crop in the spring they also flower to produce seeds as well.
Their ability to store fresh, hydrated food over winter is what has made them such a valuable crop over the ages, they contain Vitamin C, which in the past the human diet often lacked in the winter, causing a Vitamin C deficiency disease known as scurvy, the stored root vegetables helped prevent this over winter.
Root crops are traditionally stored in underground cellars after harvest, the cooler temperatures in these keep the crop fresh for fairly long periods of time and the warmth keeps them from freezing. This ability to store well in the simple dug root cellars of the time, as well as ease of growing and harvest by hand also made them popular to use in winter as livestock feed as well as human food. Today modern cold storage keeps them just above freezing and allows an even longer time of freshness. In former times by the time spring and planting season came along the stored root crops were past prime, today better storage and low cost shipping allow use to both keep these items fresher longer as well being able to be shipped in from regions with different climates.
Today we have three very popular root vegetables; one of each type that are very popular; carrots, potatoes and onions, with a fourth, garlic used a lot, but garlic in most cases is considered flavoring for other foods rather than a vegetable in it’s own right, there are exceptions though, the average person seldom sees any other types than these three (or four if you count garlic) and I would guess there are many in this country who have never eaten any other type. In the 19th Century we had a larger variety of root vegetables in common, everyday use than we see today, there are several reasons for this, mostly based on better storage methods, better and cheaper transportation and improved farming methods, and most important, the ability of these three main types to grow over a large part of the country as well as being easily adapted to modern large farming operations.
This is a list, to the best of my ability to cover all the ones a person in the 19th century might encounter and an estimate of when they would be in season although we know some of them keep well in root cellars. The season is just a generalization, in extreme southern areas the season can be a little earlier and in the far north pat of the country as well as Canada the season my be later.
I am covering them by family in alphabetic order to keep the closely related types together, and then covering them by common name in the family. Today of course, our modern cultivars we find in the stores are most often not exactly the same types; our modern types have been improved for better yield, often larger size and for many, have been developed so the whole field, planted at the same time is ready at the same time. The seed for some of the older cultivars can be obtained by people who specialize is growing and saving the seed for these older types, there are many businesses that have these seeds and once again the internet is a good source. To grow these types one must have the land, the time and the knowledge to do this, most will have to use what the modern commercial sources provide, in reality few but us hard core food historians will know the difference.
Amaranth Family/ Amaranthaceae
Beet: Beta vulgris
Our common table beet is descended from the wild sea beet which grows through out the coastal regions of Europe, northern Africa and southern Asia. Beets are grown and eaten for both the tap root and the tops which are used for greens. In the United States, when we refer to beets we mean the root, in other parts of the world they use the term beet root.
Beet root has been used for centuries as a dye and food coloring; even today it is used as a food coloring. Beets are best cooked with the small tap root, the skins and part of the tops left on to keep them from bleeding. In other words, cut most but not all the top off and cook them like that. Today there are yellow and white varieties that do not bleed, but these are absent from references I’ve seen except for the sugar beet and the mangle-wurtzel (a large type used as stock feed although eatable by humans). Beets are eaten as pickles or are cooked and either eaten on there own or often mixed in other foods to give them color as much as taste. Sliced and buttered is a common way they are eaten on there own and in combination with potatoes and often meat, the wonderful dish, red flannel hash seldom seen today outside of reenactment camps.
The season for beets starts about the first of June and carries into the fall, depending on the area of the country. Beets do not store as well as many of the other root crops.
Lily Family/ Amaryllidaceae
The pungent plants used as rood crops we call onions are several species in the genus Allium, the vast majority being cultivars of the species Allium cepa. Before I cover these different types of onions, I want to mention a term that is often used but not always well understood, that is the term “scallion” or green onion; this is not a type or species of onion, but rather the young leaves and sometimes the root of several different types of onions.
Bulb/Common Onion: Allium cepa
Bulb Onions: Onion is a name that can be put on several species in the genus Allium , onions are biennials or in some cases even perennials. When the term onion is used by itself it most often means the common onion or as it’s also known the bulb onion
Bulb onions are grown from seed; they can be planted in the spring and allowed to mature during the summer and fall, then harvested and stored. Onions can and were also started indoors while it is still cold and the young plants can then be transplanted when the ground warms up enough. Also onion seed can be planted in the summer very thick, and then the small immature bulbs dug in the fall, stored in a cellar and then set out in the spring. All three of these methods were used in the time period for both home gardens and larger commercial “truck gardens.”
Although there are many types of wild onions all over the world, our common onion has no known ancestor and most likely is a development of selective plant breeding, most likely from somewhere in the Middle East or Western Asia. They were brought to North America by the early English settlers and may also have been brought by the Spanish.
As its name implies this is the common large onion we get as bulbs that are most times about the size of a baseball and come in many varieties and three basic colors, yellow, white and red. These are all of the same species but ate just different cultivators. These can vary from sweet to fairly hot in the raw state, but they all sweeten up after cooking. The red tend to be mild and are often used raw in salads for color, the yellow with a few exceptions, tend to be stronger in flavor but lower cost. The whites tend to take on a nice golden color when sautéed, for most general cooking I buy the cheaper yellows.
The exception to the yellow onions being the more pungent that the whites and yellows are several cultivators that are often grown in specific regions of the country that give specific results because of the type of soil in that region. These often have the name of the region they were grown in, such as the Vidalia from Georgia and the Walla Walla from Washington State as well as others less well known. These types are all developments of the 20th century, the pungency of onions is caused by sulfur compounds in the onions, the more of these, the more pungent the onion is, these also have to be grown in low sulfur soils to get the full affect.
The onions of this species are used for both scallions, as well as the more common mature bulbs. The bulbs are allowed to mature, the tops to die down some and then they are harvested, allowed to dry some and put in storage, in the 19th Century and beyond home gardeners would tie the tops together and hang them from the rafters in the root cellar, late summer to fall are the times that the majority of the United States harvests bulb onions, the green onions are best in the spring a few weeks after planting because age and heat of summer tend to toughen them.
Multiplier Onion/ Shallot: Allium cepa subspecies aggregatum
Another variant of the same species is multiplier onions these onions produce multiple bulbs in a clump similar to garlic. These are a milder flavor and are often referred to as shallots, although shallot in the true sense refers to a specific group of cultivators of this type. Today these are often thought of for gourmet foods, but in the time they were often just another type of onion grown for food.
Chives: Allium schoenoprasum
Chives are also a relative of the onion that is and was used, but it is used more as an herb than as a vegetable and will be covered under that heading at a later time.
Garlic: Allium sativum
Garlic is most often used to flavor foods rather than eaten on it’s own as a vegetable, there are exceptions of course, but this is very true in 19th Century cooking in the United States so like chives will be covered at another time.
Leeks: Allium ampeloprasum
Leeks are another relative of the onion that’s use dates back to ancient times. Leeks are not a true root vegetable, part that looks like a root or bulb is a leaf sheath that is most often covered with extra dirt to blanch it. Leeks were most likely developed from some type of wild onion in the Mediterranean region and have been in use for thousands of years, it came to North American with both the French and the English settlers where it mostly seems to have been used as flavoring in soups and stews based on searching period recipes.
Leeks are cultivated by seed and there are two distinct types, a milder smaller form planted early in the spring and a larger more pungent type plated in the summer and harvested in the spring. For those desiring to grow leeks the seed suppliers will specify which types is summer and which types is winter.
Winter or Bunching Onions: Allium fistulosum & Allium ×proliferum
This are two very similar onions that are not well know today, but were very common in gardens in the past, due to the fact they are perennials that sprout and allow scallions to be harvested right after the ground thaws. Today with shipped in, out of season produce this has lost its importance, but at the time it often helped cure scurvy which is a lack of vitamin C caused by the very lack of fresh vegetables, a big problem in a lot of areas in the 19th Century.
The first of these two types I’m going to cover was often called the Welsh Onion or in modern times it is often called the Japanese Bunching Onion(Allium fistulosum), despite the names, this type of onion which came to the United States through Europe is thought to have it’s origins in Northwestern China.
This onion species does not form large bulbs underground, it does form clumps and these clumps can be separated to start new patches or it can be started from seed. There are different cultivators of this species and they range from fairly small to fairly big sized, the larger types were the ones seen a lot in home gardens in the 19th Century.
The other species of onion that was often grown for scallions is often known as Egyptian onion, walking onion or top setting onion (Allium ×proliferum). Thought to have its origins somewhere in Asia, perhaps India, recent genetic testing has shown this is a cross between the common onion and the so called Welsh onion, it also made its way to gardens in America by way of the early settlers.
This onion is a bit unusual because it does not flower like most other types of onion to form seed, but instead form true bulbs on the tops of the stems. These bulbs will fall to the ground and grow on there own, spreading the bed, or they can be picked and then planted where another bed is desired. This type onion does form an underground bulb that is smaller than the common onion and is more pungent than most of the cultivators of that type onion.
Both of these onions are best harvested for scallions by taking a knife and cutting them off below ground when they appear in the spring, this allows the root to send up more shoots and allows harvest till hot weather makes them hot and tough using the same plants in the bed. The bulbs on top of the Egyptian onion can also be picked and used, although on the small side, they are about the right size for pickling and using in place of the true pearl onion (Alliumampeloprasum var. sectivum) another type onion species that is grown for pickling and other uses in cooking. The true pearl onion is not grown to any extent in this country, because it takes two years to fully mature, the frozen or pickled so called pearl onions in stores are most often immature bulbs of the common onion that are planted in dense rows. The true pearl onion is distinguished by having a single leaf attached to the bulb like garlic rather than multiples like most onions.
The other type of onions often used in 19th century America were the wild types, like most of the other wild plants used for food, I am not going to cover them, but only domesticated crops. There are many species of wild onions native to this country and to try and cover all of them as to region where found is better covered in books specifically to this subject.
Mustard Family/ Brassica
Radish: Raphanus sativus
The radish is familiar to most any gardener because it is often the first vegetable planted in the spring and the first to harvest. It is of the same family as turnips and mustard and has it origins in western Asia and southern Europe. It was cultivated by the ancient Greeks and the Romans and moved into northern Europe via the Romans and to the United States by the early English settlers.
Colors and shapes varied just like today’s modern cultivars, its quick germination and quick maturity made it an important vegetable because it helps fight scurvy after a long winter. Most commonly planted by modern gardeners in the spring, these varieties are often called spring or summer radishes, other varieties are known as winter radishes and are planted in the fall and often harvested in early winter for storage in the root cellar. The spring types can also be planted in the fall with great success but they do not keep as well in storage as the winter type.
Today most radishes consumed in the United States are eaten raw by themselves or in salads, but they are also sometimes steamed, or put in soups and pot roasts, today this is more common outside of the United States. Cooking also allows the use of the tougher more pungent ones; this is caused by both the age of the root and hot dry weather.
Rutabaga: Brassica napobrassica
Also called Yellow Turnips, Swedish Turnips or Swedes, this vegetable is a cross between the turnip and the wild cabbage. The exact time and place this occurred is lost to history, but somewhere in Europe by the late Middle Ages. The rutabaga likes cool weather and this made it a popular vegetable in the Scandinavian countries, hence the nickname Swedish Turnip.
The rutabaga is not very popular in the United States, and to a point it is hard to tell if it ever was. It is referenced in a few old cook books, sometimes as a Russian Turnip and well as a Turnip Rooted Cabbage, Yellow Turnip and may have also been just referenced as a turnip; its uses in this country have been and still are the same as the common turnip, in stews, roasts, boiled, steamed and mashed as well as raw. As the name Yellow Turnip implies, this root vegetable is yellow in color and has a purple top.
The rutabaga does have an advantage over turnips; it does have a longer storage life, both if left in the ground after frost as well as in cellar storage, both turnips and rutabaga can produce two crops a year in most of this country, a spring crop and a fall crop, the warmer weather of summer tends to make the roots tough.
Turnip: Brassica raba subspecies raba
The root vegetable we call a turnip has it origins in most likely India and was often grown for the oil bearing seeds as well as it’s edible root, it made it’s way into southern Europe at least 2500 years ago and was an important crop through out Europe by the early Middle Ages. From there it made its way to America with the early settlers.
Turnips are generally white or white with a purple top, the purple top type being the most common. Turnips are best when they are the size of a golf ball up to about the size of a baseball, after that they tend to get hot and woody texture unless the weather is very cool and wet.
Although still seen in produce sections of grocery stores and in home gardens, as a root vegetable often the tops are more known to many people as cooked greens. In the 18th and 19th century turnips were a very popular vegetable. It has some advantages for the type of farming done at the time for good reasons. One is they are easy to plant, for large amounts the seeds can be broadcast on tilled soil and then covered with a harrow. Like the rutabaga, in most areas of the country you can get two crops of the same plot of land. These can be planted in the spring early and then harvested in a couple of months. In midsummer they can be planted again for a harvest in the fall, or they can be planted before and after other short maturing crops.
Morning Glory Family/ Convolulaceae
Sweet Potatoes: Ipomoea batatas
The sweet potato is another crop originating in the Western Hemisphere, specifically in Central America and North Eastern South America and it is in the morning glory family. The sweet potato is sometimes called a yam; however the true yam is a very different plant in an entirely different genus, originating in Africa and Asia and is closer related to lilies than it is to the true sweet potato. The true yam has never has had much popularity in the United States.
The true sweet potato like the true potato was first taken to Europe by the Spanish and it was brought into North America by the European settlers about the same time as the potato. The sweet potato needs a warmer climate than the common potato which has always made it more popular in the southern United States than in the northern part, the sweet potato will not tolerate any frost and the growing season in the northern United States can be chancy at times with this crop, depending on ones exact location. The sweet potato like the common potato is not grown from seeds and is cultivated is cultivated from rooted cuttings of stems and roots started from a sweet potato tuber.
Sweet potatoes come in a range of color, both the sins and the flesh; they range from beige to purple with reds, oranges and yellows in between. The lighter color ones as a rule of thumb tend to be drier and not as sweet and the darker colored ones. Sweet potatoes can be used in any manner that the common potato can be used as well as that southern classic, Sweet Potato Pie, which for all practical purposes is simply a pumpkin pie made with sweet potatoes instead of pumpkin.
Harvest is in late summer to fall depending on the area and a crop that keeps well after harvest in a cool storage such as our cellar. Sweet potatoes actually mature and get sweeter after harvest, being at their prime 6 to 8 weeks after harvest.