Amorica Big Top Horseradish

Armoracia Big Top Horseradish is a root vegetable with a hot, spicy, tangy flavor, used as a spice and to create a condiment. Big Top is a top garden performer with excellent size and vigor. The plants are widely adaptable and resistant to foliage diseases, rust, and bacterial spot. You can harvest roots during the 2nd fall after planting and expect 2 to 3 lbs of large, white roots with excellent flavor. For the best flavor, wait until late fall, after the first frosts when the leaves have died back.

An Armoracia rusticana variety, Big Top horseradish is a member of the cabbage (Brassicaceae) family. The perennial plant grows as an upright mound with a mature size of about 3 to 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide. Large and coarse, the rosette of matte green leaves emerges in late spring, adding nice texture and color to mixed beds and landscapes. It makes a lovely specimen plant or mass planting, especially in early summer when tall flower stalks rise above the foliage and bloom in small white flowers. The flowers are followed by small seed pods.

Cold hardy to Zone 3, Big Top grows best in a well-prepared, weed-free bed with full sun and deep, average soil having a pH of 6.2 to 6.7. Fertilize in spring, keep soil moist while plants are establishing, and water throughout the growing season, but do not overwater. Horseradish helps repel potato beetles in the garden.