What do you do with a 9-1/2-pound turnip?

SUFFOLK SUN

What do you do with a 9-1/2-pound turnip?

It's a question few gardeners or cooks ever face.

But Dick Erdt wonders about it every time he pulls another tremendous turnip from his backyard garden in the northern village of Eclipse.

Erdt, a tugboat captain and waterman, has cultivated large summer and winter gardens for years.

But he was as dazzled as the neighbors recently when he pulled up the giant, purple-tinged turnip that measured 31 inches in diameter.

His antique market scale confirmed the weight of 9-1/2 pounds.

The surprise continued as he pulled another - and another - of the big turnips, most weighing between 6 and 9 pounds.

Turnips are generally harvested when they're baseball size - 2- to 3 inches in diameter, and about 6 ounces in weight, according to Janet Spencer, extension agent and vegetable specialist with the Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Suffolk.

"They will become hard and pithy when harvested any larger," she said.

Last week, as Cathy Darden and Connie Andrews, friends from Erdt's neighborhood, "oohed" and "aahed" over the size of the turnips, they wondered how flavorful a giant turnip could be.

Mary Hill, Erdt's partner, cleaved one of the giant turnips in half and deftly cut a thin slice.

"Good turnips should taste something like a radish, not as sweet as a rutabaga, but crisp and clean," she said.

The turnips passed the test, glistening white with a bit of crunch and a distinctive turnip-y taste.

Erdt, who is best known locally as "Deepwater Dick," is almost as proud of his garden as he is of his skill with long oyster tongs that earned him the nickname when he was oystering in the waters near Gloucester.

The rest of the Erdt-Hill garden is flourishing with kale, rutabagas, broccoli, brussels sprouts, collards and cabbage - all well-sized, but not gargantuan.

Rows of Mason jars, filled with colorful canned fruits and vegetables, line cupboard shelves in their home.

And the neighbors are a further testament to the couple's gardening and preserving prowess.

"He makes a hot sauce so hot it's painful," Darden said, recalling her first encounter with Erdt's locally legendary hot pepper concoction.

But how did Erdt and Hill manage to produce such huge turnips, and with greens, which some folks prefer to collards, lushly plentiful on each plant as well?

Turnips require quite a bit of water to develop properly and will suffer from inadequate moisture, Spencer said.

She believes the key to Erdt and Hill's success was most likely the organic fertilizer they used.

That's Erdt's guess as well. The seeds were regular turnip seeds he bought at Norfolk County Feed and Seed in Portsmouth.

But he covered the newly planted garden with 4 inches of horse manure.

Organic fertilizers have positive impacts on the soil quality, and that is directly linked to plant quality, Spencer said.

They make the soil more "friable," important to root crops since they do not grow well in hard-packed soils.

Organic fertilizers, she said, also put nitrogen and other nutrients directly into the root zone, where they will be more beneficial to the plants.

But most importantly in the Erdt garden, Spencer said, is the ability of organic fertilizers to enhance the water-holding capacity of soils.

"This is especially important i n drought years because the soil can hold on to what little amount of water it received and keep it available for the plants to use," she said.

"But, given all this, I am still impressed that the larger turnips maintained their quality."

Finding ways to use the bumper crop hasn't been too difficult for Erdt and Hill so far.

They've given away turnips - including the 9-1/2-pound wonder - as well as cabbages and other veggies, and enjoyed some of the turnips, boiled and mashed with butter and seasoning, like potatoes, or diced into salads, like radishes.

Phyllis Speidell, (757) 222-5556, phyllis.speidell@pilotonline.com