9 Turnip Varieties Ranked: Which to Choose for Fast Harvests, Hard Frosts, and Sweet Salad Greens
Tokyo Cross reaches harvest in 35 days. Purple Top takes 58. Here’s which of 9 turnip varieties matches your frost window, flavor goal, and garden space.
The turnip you pull in late October after three frosts is not the same vegetable you planted in spring. Cold converts stored starch to sugar, producing a sweetness that surprises most first-timers who’ve only ever eaten supermarket turnips. But which variety you chose matters as much as the frost — Tokyo Cross delivers roots in 30–35 days; Purple Top White Globe takes 50–58. Seven Top produces no edible root at all, only flavorful greens. Hakurei, bred for Japanese fresh-eating traditions, tastes more like a crisp Asian pear than anything you’d recognize as a classic turnip.
These aren’t minor differences. Plant the wrong variety and you’ll get tough roots in summer heat, bitter greens instead of sweet flesh, or a fast-maturing salad type where a long-braised storage turnip belongs.
Below: nine varieties organized by use case — classic workhorses, speed champions, salad and sweet types, cold-hardy and greens-focused picks — plus a decision table matching variety to specific garden goals. For full growing instructions including soil preparation, spacing, and succession schedules, see our complete turnip growing guide.
At a Glance: 9 Turnip Varieties Compared
| Variety | Days to Harvest | Root Size | Raw Flavor | Best For | Frost Hardiness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Cross | 30–35 | 2–3" | Mild, crisp | Fast harvest, succession planting | Moderate |
| Hakurei | 35–40 | 2–3" | Sweet, fruity, juicy | Salads, raw eating | Low — harvest before hard frost |
| White Lady | 38–42 | 3–4" | Sweet, mild | Spring or fall harvests | Moderate |
| Scarlett Queen | 38–43 | 3–4" | Mild, crisp | Colorful mixed dishes | Moderate |
| Oasis | 40–45 | 3–4" | Melon-sweet, fruity | Raw eating, light cooking | Moderate |
| Golden Globe | 40–55 | 3–4" | Sweet, almond-like | Storage, fall roasting | Good |
| Purple Top White Globe | 50–58 | 4–6" | Peppery, earthy | Cooking, storage, greens | Very good |
| Seven Top | 40 (greens) | Foliage only | — | Turnip greens harvest | Very good |
| Just Right | 35–40* | 5–7" | Mild, white flesh | Fall and winter crops only | Excellent |
*Just Right matures quickly but is recommended as a fall crop only — not spring — by extension services including Clemson and NC State.
The Reliable Workhorses: Purple Top White Globe and Golden Globe
Purple Top White Globe
Purple Top White Globe is the default turnip for American gardens and the benchmark everything else is measured against. It takes 50–58 days to full maturity, produces roots that grow 4–6 inches across, and offers two harvests from one plant: you cut the deeply lobed dark-green leaves throughout the season for cooked greens, then pull the roots in fall when the purple and white coloring is fully developed.
The flavor shifts noticeably with size. A Purple Top root pulled at 3 inches has a mild, pleasantly peppery bite that works well raw or roasted. Left until 5–6 inches, the same plant delivers a stronger earthiness — excellent in long braises, the classic Southern turnip green pot, or winter soups, but more assertive than the younger root. Harvesting early means gentle flavor; letting it mature means storage vegetable. Both are useful; the choice depends on how you plan to cook it.
The frost-flavor connection here is genuine biology, not gardener folklore. When soil temperatures drop below 45°F (7°C), turnip roots convert stored starches into sugars — the same enzymatic mechanism that sweetens parsnips and carrots after cold exposure. NC State Extension’s plant database confirms it directly: turnips “taste best after a frost” [4]. A fall-planted Purple Top root pulled two weeks after the first hard frost will be noticeably sweeter than an identical root grown through warm September soil. Clemson Cooperative Extension lists Purple Top White Globe as their primary variety recommendation for both roots and greens — the dual-purpose flexibility is the main reason it stays at the top of the list [1].
Golden Globe
Golden Globe (sold by some suppliers as Amber Globe) produces 3–4 inch golden-amber roots in 40–55 days and stays noticeably sweeter than Purple Top at equivalent sizes — closer to an almond-tinged sweetness than the classic peppery punch. The golden flesh holds its color when roasted, which matters if visual appeal on the plate counts. It’s a reliable open-pollinated heirloom, meaning seeds can be saved year to year, and it stores for several weeks in a cool root cellar or refrigerator.
The main practical difference from Purple Top: Golden Globe is less pungent at maturity, making it more versatile for anyone who finds classic turnip flavor too sharp. It’s also less widely stocked at big-box garden centers — specialty seed companies carry it reliably, but plan ahead if that’s your source.
Speed Champions: Tokyo Cross, White Lady, and Scarlett Queen
Tokyo Cross
Tokyo Cross is the fastest reliable turnip for most gardens, ready in 30–35 days at 2–3 inches across. The Royal Horticultural Society has awarded it their prestigious Award of Garden Merit and describes it as “one of the oldest varieties and one of the best” — an unusual endorsement for a variety primarily marketed on speed [3]. The roots are white, smooth-skinned, mild, and crisp, without the peppery edge that marks storage types.
The most practical use of Tokyo Cross’s speed is succession planting. Because you’re pulling roots in a month, you can sow every two to three weeks from late summer through mid-fall and maintain a rolling harvest through October. Each sowing ties up the bed for only five weeks; a single 4-foot row yields enough roots to feed two people for a week. This makes Tokyo Cross ideal for transitional beds — sow it the moment warm-season crops finish. When you clear out spent tomato plants in late August, for instance, a row of Tokyo Cross planted immediately will be ready before the first frost [see our tomato growing guide for timing].
White Lady
White Lady is a hybrid maturing in 38–42 days with uniformly smooth, pure-white roots at 3–4 inches. “Mild” is the accurate word — virtually no bitterness, sweet enough to slice raw, and consistent across individual plants in ways that open-pollinated varieties aren’t. That plant-to-plant consistency matters when you want predictable presentation for markets or shows. Harvest to Table describes the flavor as “sweet and tender with minimal bitterness” [5]. Clemson Extension includes White Lady among their recommended varieties specifically for this reliability [1].
Scarlett Queen
Scarlett Queen offers something the white and purple types don’t: real visual contrast. Bright red skin over white flesh makes it useful in mixed root dishes, raw vegetable platters, or pickles where color is part of the appeal. Maturity runs 38–43 days and the flavor is mild and crisp — closer to White Lady than Purple Top on the spice scale. It’s less widely available in seed catalogs than the others in this section, but the distinctive color makes it worth seeking out if you grow for presentation as much as flavor.
A Different Vegetable Entirely: Hakurei and Oasis
Japanese salad turnips like Hakurei and Oasis are not a milder version of the classic turnip. They’re bred from the ground up for raw eating, with water content, texture, and flavor chemistry that makes them behave more like a crisp apple than a root vegetable destined for the pot. Don’t expect to substitute one for the other in a long braise — they dissolve quickly and lack the structural backbone that storage types provide in slow cooking.
Hakurei
Hakurei, the benchmark salad turnip, matures in 35–40 days to 2–3 inch smooth white roots that are genuinely sweet — fruity and juicy when bitten raw, with a flavor closer to a mild Asian pear than anything you’d recognize as a conventional turnip. Harvest to Table rates it as “sweet, mild, and very tender — excellent for raw eating or light cooking” [5]. Sliced thin in salads, eaten whole from the garden like a radish, or quick-pickled with rice vinegar, Hakurei performs in ways Purple Top simply doesn’t. I harvest mine at about two inches and bite in right at the bed — the juiciness alone is worth growing it once just to understand what a fresh salad turnip tastes like.
The cold-hardiness trade-off is significant and under-reported in most guides. Hakurei is the least frost-tolerant of the nine varieties here — roots don’t survive temperatures below 10°F (−12°C), and approaching that threshold, cold-stressed roots become soft and lose their juiciness. This is the opposite of the frost-sweetening effect that helps storage types: for Hakurei, a hard freeze means loss, not improvement. Plan your harvest timeline carefully in zones 4–5 where early frosts arrive quickly.
Oasis
Oasis holds an RHS Award of Garden Merit for its “delicate, sweet, fruity taste” and is notably “slow to bolt” — a genuine advantage in spring when other turnips run to flower in warm spells [3]. The roots grow slightly oblong to 3–4 inches and can be harvested at any stage, from small salad-sized to full maturity. That flexibility, combined with the bolt resistance, makes Oasis the more forgiving of the two salad-type options for gardeners who can’t check their beds daily. It performs reliably across USDA zones 3–9 in both spring and fall plantings.
Built for Cold and Cut-and-Come-Again: Seven Top and Just Right
Seven Top
Seven Top makes no pretense about its roots — it barely develops them. This greens-only variety, grown in American gardens since the 1830s, directs almost all its energy into producing dark-green, full-flavored leaves harvestable in 40 days and cut repeatedly through the season. The roots are small and tough; don’t plant Seven Top expecting anything worthwhile to pull from the ground.
What you get instead is arguably the best turnip green of any variety — intensely flavored, with the leafy bitterness and body that makes it the traditional Southern choice for pot likker. UF/IFAS Extension explicitly recommends Seven Top when the goal is greens rather than roots [2]. It tolerates repeated frosts without wilting, extending the harvest into late fall and early winter in zones 5–7. For container growers it’s also practical: no root development means you can grow it in a shallow pot, cut the leaves at 4–6 inches, and it regrows from the base.
Just Right
Just Right is the variety most guides forget to warn you about, and the warning matters: it’s a fall crop only. Clemson Extension and NC State both flag it as unsuitable for spring plantings — in spring, it matures in summer heat and produces tough, bitter roots [1, 4]. Save it for your late-summer sowing (6–8 weeks before first frost) and it delivers: large 5–7 inch white roots in 35–40 days with mild, clean flavor and excellent cold tolerance that lets it stay in the ground well into early winter.
The large root size limits container viability — Just Right needs at least 12 inches of soil depth and wide spacing between plants. In a garden bed in its correct season, it’s one of the most productive single-harvest varieties available, filling a storage role that smaller and faster types can’t match.
Choosing by Goal: A Quick Decision Guide
| Your Goal | Best Match | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Fastest possible harvest | Tokyo Cross | 30–35 days; succession-sow every 3 weeks |
| Raw eating and salads | Hakurei or Oasis | Bred for sweetness and juicy texture; not peppery |
| Grow through winter | Purple Top + mulch, or Just Right | Cold-tolerant storage types; flavor improves with frost |
| Turnip greens, not roots | Seven Top | Foliage-only; best leaf flavor; cut-and-come-again |
| Cooking and storage | Purple Top White Globe | Most flexible dual-purpose variety; widely available |
| Container growing | Hakurei, Tokyo Cross, or Oasis | Small roots; fast harvest; work in 10"+ pots, 8" deep |
| First turnip, gift or market quality | White Lady | Uniform, mild, consistent — no surprises plant to plant |
The one pairing to avoid: Just Right in spring. Unlike Tokyo Cross or White Lady, which handle both spring and fall, Just Right is a fall-only variety. Planted in spring, it matures in summer heat and delivers tough, bitter roots. Save it for your late-summer sowing.
For gardeners in zones 6–9, fall is when most turnip varieties perform best. The cooler temperatures of September through November trigger the starch-to-sugar conversion that makes fall-grown roots genuinely sweeter than spring crops. Scheduling a fall turnip planting alongside other cool-season crops makes full use of that window — our year-round planting guide includes zone-specific timing charts for planning multiple succession crops through autumn.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Japanese turnips and regular turnips?
Japanese salad turnips (Hakurei, Oasis, Tokyo Cross) are bred for raw eating — smaller, sweeter, juicier, and far less peppery than western storage types like Purple Top White Globe. They are technically the same species (Brassica rapa) but were developed along completely different lines: Japanese kabu varieties were selected for fresh consumption; western varieties were selected for long storage and cooking. Substituting one for the other in recipes produces very different results — salad types dissolve quickly in braising liquid, while storage types hold their shape.
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→ View My Garden CalendarDo turnips taste better after frost?
Yes — this is documented biology, not gardener folklore. When soil temperatures drop below 45°F (7°C), turnip roots convert stored starches into sugars, producing measurably sweeter flesh [4]. NC State Extension confirms that turnips “taste best after a frost.” The effect is strongest in storage types like Purple Top White Globe and Golden Globe; salad types like Hakurei are already sweet and benefit less — and as noted, Hakurei does not tolerate a hard freeze and should be harvested before temperatures drop below 20°F (−7°C).
Can I grow turnips in containers?
Yes, with the right variety. Hakurei, Tokyo Cross, and Oasis are the best container choices — their 2–3 inch roots fit in a 10-inch pot at least 8 inches deep. Purple Top White Globe and Seven Top also work in containers, though Purple Top needs at least 12 inches of depth. Just Right, at 5–7 inches across, requires wide and deep containers and is not practical for pot growing. Whatever variety you choose, loose moisture-retentive potting mix and consistent watering matter more in containers than in garden beds — turnip roots crack when soil moisture fluctuates sharply.
What is the easiest turnip for beginners?
Purple Top White Globe for cooking, Hakurei for raw eating. Purple Top is forgiving of imperfect soil, widely available at any garden center, dual-purpose for both roots and greens, and backed by extension service data from every US region. Hakurei rewards beginners with a genuinely surprising fresh flavor — harvest a root at 2–3 inches and try it sliced right at the garden bed to understand what the salad turnip category delivers that cooked turnips never will.
Sources
- Clemson Cooperative Extension — Turnips & Rutabagas (hgic.clemson.edu)
- UF/IFAS Gardening Solutions — Turnips (gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu)
- Royal Horticultural Society — How to grow turnips (rhs.org.uk)
- NC State Extension Plant Toolbox — Brassica rapa Rapifera Group
- Harvest to Table — Best Turnip Varieties for Flavor, Size, and Growing Time
