When Life gives you lemons........make Lemonade ;-)

Open up a Turnip stand, and start raking in the coals ;-O

I'm fairly new to vegetable gardening, so all I can offer is my own lesson learned from this past season's vegetable garden experiment.

For some reason - I couldn't tell you why - I ordered turnip seeds to include in my first ever vegetable bed despite never having used this vegetable in the kitchen nor eaten it in any way other than thinly sliced, pickled. Certainly, I did not grow them just to dump them, so I found recipes that actually turned out "yummy," when I would have been easily satisfied with "edible." For the root, take a look at the link below for caramelized turnips. For the greens, I roughly followed a mixed greens recipe that I found on another food site and ended up developing my own version of it, which even my picky 12-yr old loves. I'll share it with you if you're interested.

The lesson learned was to make the best with what you've got. I'd tell you to take your lemons and make lemonade, but you've got turnips, and I'm not too sure about turnipade. Anyway, if the recipes don't work out for you, you could always sell the turnips at a local farmer's market.

Here is a link that might be useful: Caramelized Turnips

You beat me to it, Jon! =)

I just reread the original post and something clicked. Isn't it true that if the last thing farmed was turnips, 4 years ago, that means that those turnips have gone through 4 cycles of germination to flower to seed and back to germination before you moved in? So, if you picked all of them without allowing them to flower, you would eradicate the problem, right?

You guys make me laugh! I've never, ever had a turnip and I think I'll keep it that way!! Turnipade? Blech! :0)
I guess I should look up the growth cycle of a turnip. I figured since they're tubers (I assume?), then all the action was happening underground where I can't see. I shall look it all up and see what I can do to get rid of them. I haven't asked my neighbors if they still have them growing everywhere. I'm hoping I can get out there this morning and work on some of them. There's literally thousands of shoots in my garden! Oh joy!!

No they are roots. Seems strange. Normally one just plows down a crop of turnips that are left as ground cover and that is the end of it. Some of the turnips will sprout a time or two, but simple cultivation takes care of them. They would rarely volunteer for 4 years. Are you sure you have turnips?

Howdya know you don't like em if you have'nt tried em?
Turnip greens fried with bacon are really, really yummy.
Sometimes I roast them up with other roots and the odd tuber.
If eating them is that horrifying, I'd say dump as much mulch on top of them as you can.
But my answer to "how do we achieve peace in our time?" would probably go something like "blah blah, mulch, mulch, blah blah".

I'm growing on farmland and have all kinds of strange things popping up, including some sort of forage radish. Keep the fields mowed and till your garden (once). The weeds should back off after a season or two.

If you have some extra acres, you can probably find a farmer to keep them manured and cut for you in exchange for the hay.

Then maybe they're not turnips! I know that the turnip part is a root, but when I dig in the garden, I find these long, reddish brown bumpy root looking things. I figured that was part of the plant. The shoots coming up out of the ground are red at the bottom, and kind of look like mini corn stalks. I can't find a picture of young turnip shoots to save my life. I'll try to dig some of the bigger ones up and see whats at the bottom.

I think you have some variety of those animal fodder turnips. Look at the link provided. All in all, it is a good thing. The soil must have good OM by now. You may consider raising a pig for the Fall.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pasture crops

Not turnips, maybe dock. A photo would be helpful.
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I must be totally off-base because my shoots don't look anything like that! Here are the pics that I was finally able to get! Any idea what this could be??
Thanks in advance for your help in identifying this invasive plant!!
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That looks like some sort of grass, roots resemble Bahia.

So I've gotten my panties tied in a knot over grass??
I tilled yesterday and got a lot of it, but boy, there sure is a lot left. We had a ton of rain last night so I'm hoping I can get out there tomorrow and chop up the rest of it.
Thanks, Farmerdill, for your thoughts!!

Um, you tilled that grass? Ouch. Though I can't positively identify your grass, it looks like the type of perennial grassy weed that propagates through its roots (like bermuda grass.) If you cut the plant in two, you have two plants. If you till it up into 100 pieces, you have 100 new problem plants. Your best bet is to physically remove the weed and as much of the roots as you can manage to get. Chopping it up prolongs and possibly increases your problem.

It is not bermuda. The leaves look like tall fescue or sawgrass, but I have never seen a root or tiller, or whatever it is, like that.

Do a search for couch grass and dog grass. Does yours look anything like those?

It isn't bahia, either, I don't think. I have pulled bales of bahia rhizomes at my florida place. But it is certainly a rhizome-spreading grass, which explains the extremely fast growth - the green is fueled by the storage energy in the rhizome, like a potato sprout. Once the soil temp is right it goes crazy.

In any case, it's a long way from turnips! Turnips you could have had them for cooking greens at least.

There's no way to physically remove it because there's probably millions of them sprouting up everywhere. My garden is 50x50 but it's not just growing in the garden--it's in the yard and even in the driveway.
I looked up bahia and I'm too far north for that kind of grass, I think. We're in Central Virginia.
Whatever the heck it is, I'll deal with it this season, and try to kill it off in the fall/winter, if I can.
Thanks for your help!!

can you put few goats and chicken on that land and let them feast?

In central Virginia, another possibility is Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense)

Here is a link that might be useful: Johnson Grass

I don't know how much of your garden is planted so far, but if you feel like you can't control the weeds in the whole area, I'd consider limiting the planted area to as little as a quarter of the space. By careful weed management in a smaller area you may actually increase your yields compared to gardening the whole space under heavy competition from whatever weed you've got-- johnsongrass is a good guess. Virginia tech has a weed identification site (google ipm weed virginia and the link should pop up). The drawback of trying to garden the whole area and failing to get the bad weed problem under control is that you'll be perpetuating and increasing your weed population for next year.

I have a very productive garden that's approximately 25x25. The perennial weeds still kick my butt this time of year (my own pest is nutsedge right now... I won the war with bermudagrass), but with constant vigilance hand-weeding can usually be successful in a small space.

If you can limit your garden to only a portion of the space, then you could repeatedly till the rest of the area (tilling once just increases the problem. If you till repeatedly at two week intervals eventually the roots run out of steam and weaken) or mow or graze animals on it. Whenever possible, remove the roots and stems or at the very least leave them on top of the soil to dry out instead of leaving them buried to regrow.

Good luck! I wish you had turnips instead!

Here is a link that might be useful: Johnsongrass eradication

Not sure how thick the roots are. If they're 1 inch thick, they may be something else. Have you tried to chop up a root and smell it? Does it smell like any type of Zingiberaceae (ginger)?

An extremely aggressive overgrowth of ginger in central Virginia? LOL. No ginger I'm familiar with would grow vigorously on a former turnip patch. They want warm, moist tropical or sub-tropical climates and probably filtered sunshine rather than the full-sun that the veggie garden probably gets.

Ugh, Farmerdill! It looks just like Johnson grass! I don't like what I'm reading about how invasive and difficult to control and eradicate it is! I guess I will deal with it during the summer in the garden and do some research to figure out how to get rid of it over the fall and winter.
Good thing I am a stay at home mom! This has now become my full time job! :0(

Oh, and I sure feel silly thinking I had a problem with turnips! That actually would be a welcome problem to have at this point!!

Maybe it is johnson grass? That is what it looks like to me... roundup or keep mowing it down. I've heard if you keep mowing it, it will eventually give up the ghost and you won't have to dig the roots. That may actually be true-- it has certainly been easier to get rid of than bermuda grass and nutgrass. Maybe you wouldn't have to hoe it. Sharp clippers, a heavy duty weedeater? If it is johnson grass, it will get tall.

Glad you didn't eat it!

We do want goats and chickens but I feel like I need more grass than dirt before I get those babies. I will stay on top of this issue--hopefully it won't drive me too terribly mad! :0)
Plus, we just got a new lawn tractor today so I'll be all over it--except in the garden, which we've fenced in. I'll continue to till and hoe in there to get those bad boys up!!

Johnson grass is tough. It was widely used in Virginia prior to WWII as pasture and hay crops. Then folks found out how difficult it was to deal with. Not as bad as Bermuda but about equal to nutsedge. Worse in a garden because it is a tall plant that shades and soaks up the nutrients. If you can control it for a couple of years, it will eventually die off.

Sounds kind of like the Stinking Jim or Ghetto Palm trees that we have in abundance around here! Some people even have them in their front yards as an ornamental tree. My husband LOATHES those things and we try to cut them down or pull them up as much as we can, however they are EVERYWHERE on the edge of our field. Thankfully, we have tons of tulip poplars sprouting up everywhere and as fast as they grow, I think they'll take the Stinking Jims out on their own. I hope so, anyway!
Thank you, Farmerdill for sharing all of your expertise!!