Horseradish

[Ozark Lady]

I like horseradish sauce on many sandwiches, etc.

So, I decided to grow it. I have found that it is sometimes considered an invasive plant.

I have the root, it is totally bare, so now what do I do?

[rainbowgardener]

I have never grown horseradish, not sure I knew you could. But in general one way to deal with invasives is to plant them in containers.

[tn_veggie_gardner]

I agree with rainbow. I imagine Horseradish (which I would love to get my hands on! lol) would be like planting Garlic in container. Give it a deep wide one.

[Ozark Lady]

At the local Gardening Center, not a box store, by the way.
They had a whole crate of horseradish roots, in moist peat moss... they were only $3.00. So I got me one. The lady, looked it over and said, this is the top, plant this end up.

And that is basically all that I know about it. And that you just let it grow, then every so often you dig up the root, lop off a piece. Then, scrub it and grate it up... horseradish.

The root looks like a piece of driftwood!

[gixxerific]

Careful with horseradish it grows from the root or rather propagates from the root. When harvesting you MUST get every little piece or it will regrow that is the invasive part of it.

I love horseradish myself, maybe someday I will try it in a pot. But that whole invasive part kinda gets too me.

From what I have read it is very easy to grow and there are certain techniques to harvest it, check around on you tube. They will help get the whole root and nothing but the root.

Really Google and You Tube are your friends. I have found a bunch of stuff about horseradish on those. Now you got me wanting to go get some I saw some for sale the other day. I do have some big pots.

[Ozark Lady]

You convinced me, I have some 20 gallon barrels cut in half, those should be great for horseradish, lots of room to grow, and yet, when it regrows, it is still where I put it.

[gixxerific]

I was trying to find some of the videos I saw before especially one to no avail but I did find this that might tell you how careful you should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPj9q5XNpnQ

Maybe put you barrels on concrete like you would mint or other invasive to keep it from spreading.

It's obviously super easy to grow and to prepare.

In preparing all you do is take the root clean off the outside than grate it and add vinegar to keep it from oxidizing and turning brown. BOOM! ready to eat. how hard is that.

I must say again IT WILL TAKE OVER LIKE YOU WOULDN"T BELIVE!!!

[gixxerific]

Couple more things, can you tell I like horseradish.

They do have very deep taproots, and when you harvest you take what you want and store the rest in sand or something till you are ready to plant it again. You can also plant in the fall.

The whole storing and later planting tells you how hard it could be to get rid of if you miss a side shoot of the root. It's like a cockroach you can't kill it.

[Ozark Lady]

Concrete? The only concrete around has my water system setting on it, inside the well house. There is no concrete here.
What if I put a screen over the drainage hole? That should keep it in the barrel.
Mint invasive? Not for me, I kill it. But I do have a member of the mint family, that I can't identify, or get rid of, so I get the idea!

[gixxerific]

Concrete? The only concrete around has my water system setting on it, inside the well house. There is no concrete here.
What if I put a screen over the drainage hole? That should keep it in the barrel.
Mint invasive? Not for me, I kill it. But I do have a member of the mint family, that I can't identify, or get rid of, so I get the idea!

Even a pice of plywood or something, thought I may be getting a little too worried here. But if you saw that vid I posted up yonder you will see that guy planted some and had "volunteers" coming up 5+ feet away.

[Ozark Lady]

I thought, hmm, so I plant it outside the goat pen, then if it gets away, they eat it.. But, they won't eat the mint like things!

I just had an idea, I have an old boat in the garden for decoration. That has no holes at all. It is aluminum, so if I set my barrel in the boat...

[Ozark Lady]

I went to plant more beds of the garden today.

First stop was the bed, where I removed the daffodils, 2 years ago... my the daffodils there are in full bloom. ( I removed them?)

The projected next bed was the one that I removed: the tulips 2 years ago, and the strawberries and garlic last year... Oh my, no room to plant anything there at all, the tulips are soon to bloom, the garlic is looking good, and the strawberries are awake. ( I removed all these!)

I looked at the Egyptian Onion bed, I removed the tulips from it also last spring... and they are growing well in that bed too! Oh my goodness, it seems that each time, I moved them, I left some, and now they are multiplying. Since when is tulips, daffodils, and garlic invasive? Oh and did I mention the volunteer potatoes and onions growing in the pathway?

Hey, hey, hey, one bed that had daffodils had none... the one we double dug last year had nothing growing in it!

If I needed convincing to put the horseradish in a barrel and then put the barrel on the old boat, I just got it, wonder how tulips and daffodils would like to be planted in the same boat?

There is one thing to be said for tilling, at least you cover your trail of where you move stuff to! If I had tilled any of those beds, I wouldn't have this problem! Did I mention that I killed or gave away 90% of my daffodils that I had dug last year? They had worms eating them, so I dug them... the worms simply ate them inside my house! But, the ones that got missed 2 years ago... had no worms!

[gixxerific]

Ha ha. I keep noticing things around here I tried to get rid of yet are coming back in full force if not stronger.