Horseradish Planting Techniques and Management: Answering What Horseradish Is and Whether It Is Mustard

Villagers are planting horseradish.

On May 19, the reporter came to Kunduitan Village, Shibao Town, Damao Banner, and happened upon Village Director Zhang Xiliang planting horseradish at the edge of his own field.

The reporter has often gone to banners, counties and districts for interviews over the years, but it was also the first time to see horseradish planted in a field. I quickly went online to fill in the gaps: horseradish, also known as mountain radish, originated in eastern Europe and Turkey. Its root has a special pungent taste and can be used as a condiment or eaten after being ground, and the plant can be used as feed. To put it plainly, horseradish is the raw material for making mustard.

Planting horseradish sounds very exotic.

"The soil here is very suitable for growing horseradish, and the climate environment with large temperature differences between day and night and long sunshine hours is what horseradish likes." Zhang Xiliang said.

In 2016, by an accidental opportunity, Zhang Xiliang got to know Zhang Xianquan, the person in charge of Baotou Tianpeng Vegetable Co., Ltd., and came into contact with this crop called horseradish. Soon, he went to the horseradish planting base located in Dalad Banner, Ordos, for an on-site inspection, and bought a batch of horseradish seedlings, conducting a trial planting in his own field.

The trial planting was very successful. That autumn, Zhang Xiliang's horseradish yield reached 2,800 jin per mu, and the quality passed. Baotou Tianpeng Vegetable Co., Ltd. purchased all of it at 1 yuan per jin. After deducting costs, Zhang Xiliang obtained a net income of more than 15,000 yuan.

Making money himself was not the main thing; what Zhang Xiliang thought about more was how to lead the poor households in the village to shake off poverty and become better off together.

Therefore, he contacted the village directors and party branch secretaries of several nearby villages, organized poor households to visit his field, and used his own planting results and income to promote horseradish by sharing his personal experience.

Zhang Xiaoping, a nationally registered poor household in the village, was in that group at the time. Seeing it with envy, he also planted 70 mu of horseradish this year following Zhang Xiliang. "Last year, the sunflowers we planted were held down and could not be sold, and we lost everything. This year, we switched to planting this horseradish. We signed an order, so there is no worry about no one buying it in autumn." Zhang Xiaoping said.

Not only Zhang Xiaoping's family. This year, 119 households in Shibao Town signed horseradish planting agreements with Tianpeng Company, and the planting area reached 3,700 mu. The company uniformly distributes seeds, uniformly sends machines for farming, and also has technical personnel provide follow-up guidance, saving villagers worry and effort.

"As long as water is applied and the seedling emergence rate is guaranteed, the income of planting households can be guaranteed. This is because horseradish is not affected by natural disasters such as hail and strong winds, so the yield is guaranteed. Moreover, export demand is large, and sales channels are smooth." Zhang Xianquan, person in charge of Baotou Tianpeng Vegetable Co., Ltd., told the reporter.

This year, Tianpeng Company also decided to build a horseradish preliminary processing factory in the village, and give priority to hiring poor households to work in the factory. With profits from planting plus income from work, Kunduitan Village's poverty alleviation is just around the corner.

Introducing horseradish is a vivid practice of the working mechanism adopted by Damao Banner: government support, cadre contracting, enterprise driving, and farmer action. Since implementing the targeted poverty alleviation action, Damao Banner has, based on the resource endowments of each area, actively carried out the "one village, one product" and "one village, one specialty" actions through land transfer management, concentrated contiguous development, and integrated farming, planting and harvesting operations, taking multiple measures to solve the difficulty of selling, so that poor households receive more value-added benefits from the entire agricultural and animal husbandry industry chain and value chain.