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Page Count:128
Images:Full Color
Dimensions: 5.25 × 7 × 0.31 in
Publication Date:September 16, 2025
ISBN:9781774060179
Editor:Pierre Nessmann
Translated:Laurie Bennett
Illustrator:Flore Avram
Sustainability:Printed on 100% recycled paper
Printed in:Canada

Root Vegetables

A Grower's Guide

By:

Editor: Pierre Nessmann

Root crops reward careful planning with dependable, nutrient-dense harvests

From carrots and beets to lesser-known crops like salsify and oca, root vegetables are foundational to productive gardens and market farms. Root Vegetables: A Grower’s Guide provides clear, practical guidance for growing a wide range of root crops efficiently, using proven biointensive methods that support both yield and soil health.

Based on the Market Gardener Method, this concise, highly illustrated handbook helps growers understand what root crops need—and how to meet those needs with thoughtful preparation, timing, and care. Rather than treating root vegetables as secondary crops, this guide shows how they can anchor a productive growing system when managed with intention and precision.

This roadmap covers Jean-Martin Fortier’s 20 favorite varieties, offering an essential guide to hidden gems for your garden—from reliable staples to unique heirloom curiosities.

Earn up to 20 Points.

Who This Book Is For

  • Home gardeners expanding beyond basic root crops.
  • Market gardeners aiming for reliable, storable yields.
  • Growers refining crop rotations and soil management.
  • Readers seeking practical alternatives to high-input methods.
  • Anyone wanting dependable harvests from resilient crops.

What You'll Learn

  • Diverse crop profiles: Detailed profiles and clear guidance for 20 different root crops, including beetroot, carrots, parsnips, and oca from Peru.
  • Cultivation essentials: Practical instruction on soil preparation, spacing, and timing tailored to root development.
  • Management strategies: Field-tested techniques for sowing, transplanting, irrigation, and fertility management.
  • Ecological protection: Organic approaches to pest control, disease prevention, and effective crop rotation.
  • Harvest & storage: Techniques to preserve flavor, nutrition, and quality long after the growing season ends.

Praise for the Grower’s Guides from the Market Gardener series

Jean-Martin Fortier’s incredibly beautiful series of pragmatic and professional instructional manuals makes it easy for anyone to start market gardening at a professional and regenerative level.

Matt Powers, author, Regenerative Soil and Regenerative Soil Microscopy

To improve yields and reduce work by applying a market gardening mindset to your home garden, look no further than this series from Jean-Martin Fortier, a pioneer in regenerative, biointensive, and organic market gardening.

Rob and Michelle Avis, Verge Permaculture / 5th World, co-authors, Building Your Permaculture Property

What Makes This Book Unique

This guide applies the specific efficiencies of the Market Gardener Method to the unique requirements of root production. As a curated handbook in the Grower’s Guides from the Market Gardener series, it bridges the gap between general home-gardening advice and professional-scale biointensive efficiency. It features 100 full-color illustrations by Flore Avram that make technical tasks visually intuitive, helping growers take meaningful steps toward a more resilient and self-sufficient food system.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Preface: Discovering Root Vegetables

Introduction: The Essentials of Root Vegetables

Jean-Martin’s 20 Favorite Root Vegetables
Beetroot
Carrots
Celeriac
Kohlarabi
Pale-leaf Woodland Sunflower root
Turnip
Rutabaga
Oca from Peru
Tuberous Nasturtium
Parsnip
Sweet Potato
Parsnips
Tuberous Chervil
Potato
Ground Pear
Small Radish
Asian Radish
Winter Radish
Black Salsify
Jerusalem artichoke

Acknowledgments

Accessibility Information

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Content Enhancements

Alternative Text for Images: Descriptive text is provided for all images, ensuring visual content is fully accessible.
Table of Contents: Easy, direct navigation through a clean, structured table of contents.
Reading Order: Enforces a logical and consistent reading order for sequential, uninterrupted content consumption.
Page List: Includes an accurate page list for physical book page referencing and exact academic citation synchronization.
Structural Navigation: Built with a clear hierarchical layout for easy content traversal and section hopping.
Semantic Structure: Employs appropriate semantic markup to ensure absolute text clarity, meaning, and text-to-speech accuracy.

Reading Optimization

Unrestricted Formatting Preferences: User-configured assistive tools, custom typography scaling, line-spacing modifications, and native reading application options are never locked or disabled.
Color Independence: Textual layouts, data states, and links use distinct styles or symbols so that color changes are never the sole method of conveying critical information.
High-Contrast Design: Typography contrast levels comfortably exceed standard baseline parameters to reduce eye strain under any lighting environment.
Non-Visual Accessibility Support: All non-decorative editorial text and data visualizations are optimized to support reading entirely without sight.
Language Tagging: Embedded text attributes direct text-to-speech engines to use correct pronunciation defaults automatically.
Blank Page Removal: Unnecessary blank pages are completely eliminated to ensure a streamlined, smooth reading flow.

Book Extras and Resources

Explore the Grower's Guides from the Market Gardener Series

Frequently Asked Questions

Which specific root vegetables are featured in the 20 favorite varieties?

The book covers a wide spectrum including staples like carrots, potatoes, and beets, as well as unique varieties such as tuberous nasturtium, black salsify, Jerusalem artichoke, and ground pear.

Are these methods suitable for growers in difficult climates?

Yes. Jean-Martin Fortier draws on decades of farming experience in challenging climates to share resilient methods that balance productivity with long-term soil care.

Does the book cover how to store these vegetables for winter use?

Absolutely. A key focus of the guide is harvest and storage techniques designed to preserve the flavor, nutrition, and quality of storable yields.

Meet the Author

author Jean-Martin Fortier

Jean-Martin Fortier is a farmer, author, and educator who has been at the forefront of the ecological, human-scale farming movement for more than two decades. Since 2004, he and his wife have operated Les Jardins de la Grelinette, a model two-acre microfarm celebrated for its remarkable productivity and efficiency. In 2017, Fortier founded the Market Gardener Institute, which has trained and supported over 11,000 farmers in 91 countries, helping them establish profitable small-scale organic farms rooted in regenerative practices. He is the bestselling author of The Market Gardener and co-author of The Winter Market Gardener, which together have sold more than 300,000 copies in 12 languages. His pioneering work has inspired a global shift toward resilient, soil-based food systems and earned him the Meritorious Service Cross from the Governor General of Canada. Fortier lives and farms in Quebec, Canada.

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About the Publisher

New Society Publishers has been a leader in sustainable living books since 1980. Our books are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper to support the health of the planet.

B Corporation, SDG, and FSC Mixed Paper.

Environmental Benefits Statement of this Book

Chart showing environmental savings from printing Root Vegetables book on recycled paper.
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