Growing Parsnip
Parsnips — great roasted, great in soups, and great when they’re fried like chips!
Sow seeds in early spring (September) and harvest through the following autumn and winter. Sprinkle the soil with lime, general fertiliser, and poultry-based pellet fertiliser. The seeds go in one cm deep drills, thickly mulch each side of the row with only a light dusting over the row itself. The idea is to prevent evaporation thereby cutting down on the need to water. Seeds take about three weeks to germinate and therein lies a problem — parsnips have a poor germination rate. You can fill in the gaps with replacement seed, but the solution is to save your own seed
Sow seeds in early spring (September) and harvest through the following autumn and winter. Sprinkle the soil with lime, general fertiliser, and poultry-based pellet fertiliser. The seeds go in one cm deep drills, thickly mulch each side of the row with only a light dusting over the row itself. The idea is to prevent evaporation thereby cutting down on the need to water. Seeds take about three weeks to germinate and therein lies a problem — parsnips have a poor germination rate. You can fill in the gaps with replacement seed, but the solution is to save your own seed
Parsnips grow more slowly than carrots and beetroot and you should be able to begin to harvest them in March (carrots and beetroot start to be harvested by January). The roots are fine when kept in the ground and used when needed. The problem, however, is that they can start to rot around the tops, especially the large roots, towards the end of winter. Culprits appear to be slugs and snails so they should be deterred—and it’s probably a good idea to prevent water collecting in the area. (Anyway, with large roots it is quite feasible to remove the rotted area without affecting the flavour of the vegetable that remains.)
Parsnip plants will die down and lose their leaves over winter and put on new growth in spring. It’s a matter of judgement when you stop harvesting — the plants will certainly have a woody core once they start to throw up a flower stalk in late spring. Such cores can be removed because the outer part of the root is still edible.
Parsnips store well in the fridge so you don’t have to use all of a particularly large root or throw unused bits away. They do have a limited life in the fridge, however, so they tend to graduate from the fridge to the freezer. The roots are peeled, cut into chunks and frozen. When it comes to soup time, they are thawed out, cooked, and mashed — the freezing process helps to soften them (the same is true for frozen pumpkins) so baking them is not an option.
Parsnip plants will die down and lose their leaves over winter and put on new growth in spring. It’s a matter of judgement when you stop harvesting — the plants will certainly have a woody core once they start to throw up a flower stalk in late spring. Such cores can be removed because the outer part of the root is still edible.
Parsnips store well in the fridge so you don’t have to use all of a particularly large root or throw unused bits away. They do have a limited life in the fridge, however, so they tend to graduate from the fridge to the freezer. The roots are peeled, cut into chunks and frozen. When it comes to soup time, they are thawed out, cooked, and mashed — the freezing process helps to soften them (the same is true for frozen pumpkins) so baking them is not an option.