Sowing Parsnips

This one served 3 people!

I don’t know what we would do with our weekends if it we didn’t have a garden.  Doc thinks that scraping the dirt from under our fingernails keeps us out of mischief and he is probably right.  So, we were on the plot by 9.30 am, Saturday AND Sunday.

Doc spent Saturday demolishing the old summer house.  Much of it was rotten and it only needed a gentle push to bring it down.  The rest of his weekend was then taken up with sorting the pile of wood, roofing felt and glass.  He chopped some of the timber up for kindling and created a spectacular bonfire with the rest.   We now have large gap in the rhododendrons and potential for spending serious money on a replacement.   Oh heck.

On Saturday, top of the list I shoved into my jeans pocket, was ‘sowing the parsnips’.  The traditional time to start sowing root vegetables is in late winter but since we have cold winters here, I wait until spring.  However, if it is particularly cold I sometimes have to re-sow in late April or even early May.  Anyway, despite the current cold snap, I decided to get the job done because I will be busy with other things next weekend and I figured that if I cover the bed with a sheet of fleece, this would help keep the beds a little warmer.  It worked last year, anyway.

The best advice for sowing parsnips (and carrots) is to resist the temptation to use up left over seed from the previous year.  Seed does not keep well and when I buy mine, I always store it in the fridge.   There are several good varieties but I always grow Gladiator which delivers on taste and size.  It is also resistant to parsnip canker which is good if you are leaving parsnips standing over the winter.  Doc is convinced that parsnips taste better if the parsnips have been well frosted, though he has great difficulty lifting them out of hard, cold soil in January!

We work to a raised bed system for vegetables so we never have to dig.  Doc spreads on lots of our homemade, sieved compost in the winter and the worms then have plenty of time to pull it down and digest it.  Parsnips like light soil, rather than heavy clay so it can take years of composting to develop the optimum quality of soil – but it is worth the effort.  Crop rotation is also important.  There is no need for complicated regimes.  If you have plenty of space just try not to grow the same crop in the same place every year.

In the spring I lightly fork through a spade’s depth or so of soil and remove any stones.   When a parsnip seed germinates, it sends down a long tap root and if it meets a stone, it will fork and the result is an entertaining but difficult to prepare vegetable.    I make shallow drills of 2cm (¾in) deep, water them lightly and then station sow 3 seeds every 20 cm (8 inches).  When there are little seedlings, with a pair of true leaves I thin the row down to one per station.  Oh how I dislike throwing perfectly good plants on the compost heap.
 
Technically, the rows should be quite far apart, up to 30-45 cm (12-18 in) but since we have good quality soil in our raised beds, we have good crops with 23 cm ( 9) inch spacing.   I always mark the rows with plant labels to make spotting any weeds easier.  Usually, the labels are old and pre-used, much to the amusement of any visitors who comment that I have funny looking courgettes......

I don’t succession sow parsnips because they stand well in winter and we can lift them when we need them.  However, I tend to sow carrots every few weeks because they don’t stand in the ground for very long.   
After sowing, I cover the bed with fleece to keep the seeds warm and every couple of days I peek under the fleece to see if the bed is dry.  I find germination is more successful if the bed is kept on the damp side. 

Germination takes up to 21 days and once it this is achieved, parsnips are very easy to look after.  We water them once a week and remove any weeds which will compete for moisture and nourishment.  Sometimes I fertilise the soil, sometimes I don’t.   I try not to over-fertilise the soil as it can increase the acidity over time.  In fact, since most vegetables need neutral to alkaline soil, it is a good idea to lime the soil every 4 years.

Slugs can be a pest to any vegetable and we use biological control (nematodes) to help keep the numbers down.  Carrot fly can affect parsnips as well as carrots but thankfully, that is not a problem for us.  However, you can erect a barrier around the bed to shield the crop from this annoying low-flying insect.

Some gardeners do not grow parsnips because they are in the ground for 6-10 months and if space is limited then this is understandable.  However, if you do have space, they are well worth the developing the patience for.  By midsummer the bed is covered with thick unruly foliage but it is underneath the soil where the real action takes place.  Lifting the first parsnip is one of our most pleasant garden rituals.  If we are lucky, by the end of the autumn we are presented with long, knobbly, earthy-smelling roots and within the space of an hour we can enjoy a caramelised, almost fragrantly sweet, roasted parsnip on our plate.   They are delicious and I can't wait!