Tips for growing Parsnips

Agreed, I've just got 3 out of the bathroom bin

 

I'm nervous now!

 

I always buy fresh parsnip seed each season, as germination from saved parsnip seed is usually very poor.

I sow mine a few to a station once ground is warmed up a bit, with thinly sown radish seed between as markers. Once the radish is pretty well ready to pull you should be able to see the parsnips just coming through.

I thin when the parsnips are around baby size and eat the thinnings in stir fry.

 

That above method of sowing seeds in my cold, wet, clay soil in cold, wet Springs has failed to work for so many years I just don't bother with it any more.

The toilet roll tube method will also enable me to sow months earlier.

 

I've heard lots of people over the years swear by their direct sowing methods and saying they never had a problem ... maybe they are on light land, maybe they can garden any day-of-the-week when the weather is right, or maybe they have green fingers It was certainly Hit & Miss for me until I started growing in "tubes" - which I have been doing for about 5 years. For those on light land or available any-day-of-week you are luckier than the rest of us!

Here's my Pros / Cons comparison:

Sow in rows - have to thin; parsnip seed can be slow to germinate, weeds may be up by then, harder to weed / thin if that is the case. people mark the rows with sand, or sow another plant with the parsnip seed to mark the row (which strikes me as being a form of "faff"). Germination might be patchy making it difficult to get one plant at each desired spacing.

Station-sow - have to thin; can be fiddly as close together; risk that you miss killing one off (particularly if it germinates very close to another / much later than another). They will grow a deadly-embrace root.



any type of Direct-sow: on cold/wet clay it can be very difficult to get onto the ground early enough. parsnip seed can take a long time to germinate, if there is a germination failure it can be too late / very late to re-sow. Weed seeds get a march on the parsnip seed, parsnip seed being slower to germinate, making weeding fiddly.

sown in "tubes": more faff initially. Can sow the seed & prick out at any time/weather, indoors - including dark evenings; no dependency on weather / soil conditions. More faff in having to plant out - although similar if station sowing and making growing-holes. Hoeing before planting out means that the Parsnips will be ahead of the weeds (mine are normally bushy enough by the time that the weeds come up that I only have to weed once, if at all). No issue with plant spacing etc. Possible issue with roots forking if they are not planted out quickly enough, but that is still a good month later than seed would be sown direct (my diary records that I sow 01-10 March and plant out around mid-April; soil conditions then are much more likely to be workable.)

Although its probably not a significant point: can use old seed (I grow two varieties, one of them is F1, price for the two packets £4, I reckon I can reuse seed for 3 years). At the least you can buy last-year-seed in the sale, rather than having to buy this-year-seed

Here's what mine looked like on 04-Jun

 

Excellent post Kristen, which sums things up perfectly for those growing on cold, wet, clay soil. Where I grow my stuff is outside the village where temperatures get really low and the 'old hands' wouldn't even bother sowing parsnip seeds until May, so the bog roll tube method gives me a real head start.

 

Here's how I store them to save space:

 

Cor, this thread is getting really exciting - here's pics of my bog roll tubes

 

You need to get out more

 

I also kept a lot of them, following Zigs example, but in the end the weather never seemed promising enough to sow, so now I am swamped by roll tubes and no plants!

 

Another Pro for the tube method is that you can cover the ground with black weed suppressant polythene mulch beforehand to warm it up and remove it just prior to planting the tubes with germinated parsnips in.

If you mulch prior to seeding, then the slow germinating parsnip seeds are in competition with fast germinating weed seeds.

 

Whatever works for you?

I grow Gladiator which without "frosting" tastes naff, with "frosting", nothing better, I will be growing more next year!

 

My first year trying Gladiator. FingersCrossed. As a rule I don't lift my parsnips until after first frost ... bit of an issue, for Sunday Roast, if we don't get one during December! I wonder if I could put some freshly-lifted, un-frosted, ones in the freezer for a few hours ?

 

I didn't think that works unless they are are whole, living parsnips in pots and are brought out again smartish whilst still alive so they can then start converting starch to sugar, although I do keep meaning to take a parsnip juice sugar level reading with my refractometer before and after freezing pre-frost parsnip chunks to confirm it.