Lets talk about Skirret!

I just planted mine directly in potting soil and gave had good germination.
Here's one of the nice big starting roots fron a seed snail roll.

I planted my skirret seeds 10 days ago. Below is a skirret seedling for reference. Not my pic. I'm tired of googling pics for reference. (I don't want to get down on my knees to match Dian's angle.) Pic from here.

Just harvested my very first skirret. I planted a package after our discussion before it got really cold. I only found one that actually grew, wasn't even sure what it was, almost thought it was a weed. Here are the pixs. Tell me if I am mistaken.

Don't eat it! Until someone who has grown it can confirm. The leaf structure looks suspiciously like dock to me.

Below I'll post a botanical drawing of skirret. Found here, at Temperate Climate Permaculture.


I am not seeing the serated leaf edges on your plant.

I didnt eat it. Thanks for the picture. The leaves on what I pulled are definitely different. I dont know anything about dock, but I’m guessing its not edible.

If it's dock, the leaves are edible. They are regularly in my diet. Take a peek at what Greene Deanne has to say about dock here: https://www.eattheweeds.com/tag/dock/ He has a lot of free information on wild edibles.

I'm afraid Randy that I agree with Joylynn. That looks like a sort of dock to me too. If you only planted your skirret seeds a couple of months ago, it is possible that they are yet to germinate, although I think it is probably time they did.

We also eat dock - much the same way we would eat collards, mustard greens,  radish greens, or turnip greens.

Love seeing the skirret enthusiasm here. I've had a few useful observations on skirret over the years.

Skirret don't like wet feet. They thrive in aerobic soil conditions without standing water.

They also don't seem to respond well to a fertilization regime. (Manure, too much compost, or fish fertilizer etc.)

The best skirret I've grown are in soils that are high in carbonaceous material, and the resulting humic component from the inhabitant soil life.

Skirret form relationship with endomychorrizal fungi.
If there are a high concentration of soluble nutrients leaching into the soil, plants will not release the exudates that are necessary to attract mycorrhizae and other important microorganisms. The fungi need to sense that sweet carbon juice so they know where to go!

My healthiest skirrets grew in a polyculture that was planted into a very thick layer of partially decomposed arboreal wood chips. (I added some green manure and a lot of coffee grounds to the wood chips to speed up composting and turned the pile a couple times through the season.)
The layer of chips ranged from 6 inches to 1 foot high. This is because my beds are usually irregular shapes with different elevations and little mini swales. I planted the skirret seedlings right next to comfrey, sunchokes, patience dock, and hopniss. The comfrey and patience dock were on the sunny side. I kept those two chopped back initially to let the sun warm the soil, and keep those shady slugs away from my baby skirrets! As the season progressed, I let them grow out to shade the soil and relieve the other plants from hot winds. I'm in the Pacific Northwest, Fraser Valley. I only watered the beds if I saw any signs of drought stress. We get wet warm winters and dry-ish summers with some droughts and the occasional heat wave. By the time fall came the skirret plants were taller than me, and they had thrown seed everywhere.

I had to move the following year, so I scraped up the beds and plants, and kept them heeled in wood chips over the winter. I've made a new bed for them at my family farm now and new seedlings are popping up everywhere out of the chips. Here's the new poly culture bed:

Here’s some more skirret popping up in different spots. They are next to some bear garlic (allium ursinum) and either sunchokes or Maximillian sunflowers (I can’t tell them apart when they’re tiny)

It's funny. I just bought skirret seeds  from  https://akene.ca/products/semences-chervis?_pos=1&_sid=60b9d3aa5&_ss=r

(the order is on its way). However,  I did not realize that the seeds need to be stratified first. According to their directions it says:

"Growing Notes | Seeds - Skirret

Sowing and Growing
Skirret seeds are slow to germinate and should ideally be soaked in fresh water for 24 hours, then cold stratified for 45 to 60 days in the fridge.

To stratify, mix one part seeds with three parts moist vermiculite, then place the mixture in an airtight bag in the fridge for 45 to 60 days.

After stratification, you can sow the seeds in pots indoors in March. Transplant your seedlings into the garden once the risk of frost has passed, spacing them 45 cm apart.

Using deciduous wood mulch, ramial chipped wood, or leaves will help keep the soil cool and moist while preventing weeds from competing with the plant.

Skirret will appreciate a cool, deep soil, and it is even suited to wetter soils that are often avoided by other vegetables".
So...If I follow directions, it will be Fall in my neck of the woods.  The packet contains 100 seeds, so maybe, I'll just try few and see what happens, or wait until next year.

Hi Elle, what sort of temperatures are you getting overnight? If it is still dropping below 5 degrees and likely for a week or so then they'll probably still be fine, but it is getting a bit late in the season really for them to have a good chance of growing enough before winter. Probably their best chance, if you don't mind waiting, is to sow them in autumn in a pot and just leave them outside in a sheltered spot. They should germinate then well in spring next year.
I would be inclined to try just a small seed snail in the fridge though. You can make them without soil and use a thick tissue as the medium with a plastic layer to separate the seeds see here), so it would take up very little room. Keep it damp and when you see more than one seed germinating you could bring it out in a shady spot ready for pricking out one at a time.
Good luck!

Hi Nancy
Thank you kindly for the advise and the you tube videos.  I might try that method with few skirret seeds now, and the rest, as you suggested I'm going to seed it in the Fall.
It's getting warmer in daytime, cold at night and frost is expected  right up to the very end of May (I plant seedlings on June 1st).
All in all, I learned something new and interesting for sure!  Thanks again

Does anyone know if the top of the plant is edible for livestock (such as goats, rabbits, chickens, pasture type pigs)?

Hi J. welcome to permies!
I believe the leaves and flowering shoots of Skirret are edible for people (I've only tried a tiny bit so far), so see no reason why they shouldn't be edible and nutritious for livestock too. If the leaves are eaten the roots probably won't grow so well. I daresay pigs would love to eat the roots too!
Some people have real trouble with slugs eating them, but I haven't had too much trouble here getting them established.

Good afternoon folks! Very interested in having skirret in my Irish garden next year to honor my late grandfather who has some Irish ancestry and my community's early Irish past. Where can we find roots of the skirret and how we cook it as I'm new to this? Thanks!

So I have about 4 patches of skirret that took this year. Now I am wondering how best to deal with them.

I was going to try and dig at least one to try the roots, but was wondering if I should be spreading root pieces around this fall or is it best to wait and try and divide in the spring?

I'm in 6b do we get fully hard frosts here and I want to to what is best for them as well as trying to get them established in more spots as fast as I can.

Hi Dian! It looks like you're a fair bit colder than me, so you may have to do a bit of experimenting. I think that the plants will divide quite well at any point when they are dormant, but if your ground is frozen that may make digging and replanting a bit tricky. I've seen people dividing in spring well after the new shoots are coming, which seemed a bit late to me, and dividing perennials in autumn/winter is quite normal as part of rejuvenating plants. As long as you get a growing point and some of the smaller roots the plantlets should take OK I think. I usually leave the smaller, tattier storage roots too as they are more use to the plant than to me.

I am guessing skirrit might grow well on my partially decomposed used hay bales? I am going to give them a try.

I started some skirret roots last spring, and left them a full year before harvesting any, (my policy with anything 'perennial'...) I planned to harvest this fall but this spring, I decided to move them to a better spot and hoped it might be a good time to divide them.
When I dug them up, the roots were very brittle and juicy (yum!) but... really hard to separate! I want to split them up and propagate them. I tried to split the root mass but even with a sharp spade, I felt like I was just massacring them and gave up; I ended up just moving the whole bunch to a bigger bed, eating only a few of the broken roots. How do people divide them? Any tips for dividing/propagating? I really liked the few roots I tried and would like to have a whole bed of them. Thanks for sharing your know-how...

EDIT! After writing this, I found some past posts about propagating skirret, and think I may have found some answers! However, I'd still love to hear your tips! Thanks!

I've been meaning to try skirret for a couple of years now. The stratification question is interesting — I've seen conflicting advice on that. Some people just direct sow in autumn and let winter do the work naturally, which seems to get decent germination without the fridge step.

Joao Winckler wrote:I've been meaning to try skirret for a couple of years now. The stratification question is interesting — I've seen conflicting advice on that. Some people just direct sow in autumn and let winter do the work naturally, which seems to get decent germination without the fridge step.

Yes, the fridge step by and large is mimicking "winterization" (vernalization) of the seed.  Unfortunately, it gets too cold in winter where I live for all but the most hardy to get through that process alive.  So the fridge step in the spring is the next best thing and is a good alternative.