How to Grow Skirret: The Lost Tudor Root Crop
Skirret is a hardy perennial root vegetable that produces bundles of sweet, finger-thick white roots every winter from a single planting, and for a few centuries it was one of the most prized vegetables in these islands. Then the potato arrived and skirret all but vanished. It deserves the comeback: it loves damp Irish ground, shrugs off frost, and tastes like a parsnip that has been saving up its sugar. Here is its story and the full growing method.
Short on time? We grow skirret at the Earthling Plants nursery in Co. Wicklow, one of the few places in Ireland you will find it.
The Vegetable History Forgot
Skirret, Sium sisarum, is an umbellifer, cousin to carrots and parsnips, that reached Europe long ago from East Asia and settled in as a staple of medieval and Tudor kitchen gardens. It appears in centuries of garden writing, usually with the same compliment attached: old authors called it the sweetest of roots, and it was served buttered, baked into pies, and treated as something closer to a delicacy than a field crop.
What killed it was the potato: bigger, faster, easier to clean, and indifferent to how it was grown. Skirret survived in the gap between history books and seed-saver networks, and it is now quietly returning through exactly the kind of gardens that read posts like this one. Growing it is the easiest kind of garden history: the plant does all the re-enacting.
Why Skirret Suits Ireland
Skirret's two great demands are moisture and winter cold, which in Ireland are less demands than defaults. It is fully hardy, stores itself in the ground all winter the way Jerusalem artichokes do, and as a perennial it fits the plant-once logic of the perennial vegetable bed: each autumn you lift a plant, eat the fat roots, and replant a piece of the crown to repeat forever.
It is also one of the prettier vegetables: a metre or so of fresh green topped in summer with white umbrella flowers that hoverflies and other beneficial insects work hard, so it earns a spot even before you dig it.
Skirret Quick Facts
Latin name: Sium sisarum, a hardy perennial umbellifer
Height and spacing: about 1 m tall; plant 35 to 40 cm apart
Soil: deep, rich and moisture-holding; the one thing it hates is drought
Position: sun or light shade
Plant: crowns or offsets in spring or autumn; seed in spring after a cold spell
Harvest: November to March, once the tops die back; best from the second year
Eat: roasted, buttered, in soups and stews; sweet, floury, faintly spicy
Keep it going: replant a piece of crown at every harvest
Step 1: Start from a Crown, Not Seed (If You Can)
Skirret grows from seed, but seed is slow, wants a cold spell first, and gives variable plants; a crown or offset is a year ahead on day one and true to its parent. Garden Organic's advice matches our experience: crowns are simply the easier route. Plant them with the growing tips just at soil level, water in, and mulch.
Step 2: Give It the Damp Corner
Dig in compost generously and plant skirret where the soil stays moist: beside the water butt, the bottom of a slope, the bed that worries you in a wet winter. Moisture is the whole game with skirret, because roots grown dry turn thin and woody-cored, and roots grown steady and damp come fat and tender. In a dry summer, water it like you mean it.
Step 3: Let It Build Its First Year
A first-year plant makes a modest clump and modest roots; from the second year the clumps bulk up and the real harvests begin. There is almost nothing to do in between: mulch in spring, water in drought, and enjoy the summer flowers. Slugs fancy the young spring shoots, so give new plants the usual protection, and since skirret is a carrot cousin, do not plant it straight after carrots or parsnips in a bed with a carrot fly habit.
Step 4: Harvest in Winter, Replant the Crown
Once the tops die back, from November onward, fork up a whole clump. Underneath you will find a bundle of pale, pencil-to-finger-thick roots radiating from the crown. Take the fattest roots for the kitchen, then split the crown into pieces, each with a bud and a root or two, and replant them straight away, 35 to 40 cm apart. That single habit is the entire propagation system; a planting of three crowns becomes a permanent bed within a couple of years.
The ground is skirret's own cold store, so lift clumps as you need them through the winter rather than all at once. Roots left in the soil stay in perfect condition until the plant restarts in spring.
Skirret in the Kitchen
Treat skirret like a sweeter, smaller parsnip. Scrub rather than peel, roast in butter or olive oil until the edges caramelise, or simmer it into soups and stews where its sweetness carries. Older or drought-stressed roots can carry a fibrous core; if you meet one, cook the roots whole and the core slips out easily afterwards, a trick as old as the vegetable. The flavour is mild, nutty and genuinely sweet, and it needs no dressing up to be the best thing on a winter plate.
Troubleshooting Skirret
Thin, wiry roots: a dry summer or a first-year plant; water more and wait for year two
Woody cores: drought stress or old roots; keep moisture steady and cook roots whole so the core pulls out
Slug-eaten spring shoots: protect the new growth in April and May; established clumps outgrow the damage
Clump getting congested: overdue a harvest-and-divide; skirret is renewed by eating it
FAQ: Growing Skirret
What does skirret taste like? Sweet, floury and nutty, closest to a parsnip crossed with a carrot, with a gentle peppery warmth. Old garden writers rated it the sweetest root in the garden, and roasted in butter it still argues the case. The texture is firmer than parsnip and holds well in stews.
Is skirret really perennial? Yes, and that is its best feature. The plant regrows from its crown every spring, and because you replant a crown piece at each winter harvest, a skirret bed renews itself indefinitely. One purchase, managed this way, is a lifetime supply.
When do you harvest skirret? From November to March, after the tops die down, taking clumps as the kitchen needs them; the roots store perfectly in the ground. Second-year plants give far better harvests than first-year ones, so be patient with a new bed.
Why did people stop growing skirret? The potato. It out-yielded skirret, cleaned faster, and fitted field agriculture, so by the nineteenth century skirret had slipped from staple to curiosity. Nothing was wrong with the vegetable; it just lost a popularity contest to the most successful crop in European history.
Grow a Piece of Garden History
Skirret sits in the same corner of our nursery as the other quiet survivors: Jerusalem artichokes doing their indestructible thing, and the rest of the perennial roots that feed you in the months the annual garden sleeps. Earthling Plants exists for exactly these plants, and skirret might be the most rewarding of the lot to bring back.
Comments