Perennials
Horseradish
Plant Feb to early Mar; dig after frost. Contain it.
- Outside
- Plant root pieces Feb to early Mar
- Where
- In ground, penned corner or sunken bin
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Mostly rain; soak in a dry spell
- Harvest
- Roots mid Nov through winter
Care
- Water
- Nearly self-sufficient: once the roots take, the patch runs on rain and wants a soak only in a real dry stretch. A compost or leaf mulch keeps the ground cool and damp through the first Killeen summer, when a new planting is still shallow-rooted.
- Sow
- Plant pencil-thick side-root pieces in late winter or early spring, February into early March, a couple of inches deep and about a foot apart, cut square on top so up stays obvious. Give it a dedicated corner from the start: a barriered bed or a sunken bin.
- Feed
- No schedule to keep. Work 2 to 3 inches of compost into the patch before planting, the same organic-matter backbone every bed here wants, and topdress with compost each spring after. Fertile, well-drained ground grows the straight roots.
- Ready
- Wait for frost, then dig: the Killeen harvest opens after the mid-November first frost and runs through winter in ground that never locks up. Fork down one side, lever the roots free, keep the long mains, and set a cutting aside to replant the same day.
- Trouble
- Escape is the real trouble, not pests: every fragment of root left behind resprouts, so dig clean and keep the patch penned its whole life. Leaf chewing by flea beetles is cosmetic and leaves the root alone. Nothing else volunteers to fight it.
In a bag?
- No
- A bed crop here, not a container one: the storage root wants deep, cool ground for a full season, and the penned corner a Killeen patch needs anyway is containment enough. The 15 gallon cap falls short of the run a straight root wants; give it the barriered bed.
Horseradish grows well in Texas, the state guide says outright, and that makes it the honest surprise here. The price is containment and patience: a late-winter planting in a penned corner, and a root dug after frost.
Growing
The Aggie specialty guide is direct: horseradish plants grow well in Texas in fertile, well-drained soils, started from side-root pieces in late winter or early spring with a late-fall harvest. Killeen keeps that shape and moves the dates to its own anchors: pieces in February into early March, digging from mid-November on, after the frost that sweetens the root, and on through winter in ground that never locks up. Containment is the whole art, because the same guide warns the plant is difficult to eradicate and can become a weed once established: a barriered bed or a sunken bin, dug clean at harvest, every fragment binned. In alkaline clay give it the raised bed with compost that the soils calendar prescribes anyway.
Varieties
No Texas source names a strain, and sets are usually sold unnamed anyway; whatever the nursery bin carries is the variety.
In the kitchen
Grate it outdoors or regret it: vinegar added right away keeps the heat polite, and waiting a few minutes sharpens it considerably. A jar keeps in the fridge for months and covers roast beef, cocktail sauce, and the winter Bloody Mary.