Growing PARSNIPS

Pastinaca sativa

No winter kitchen garden is complete without a few rows of parsnips. Deliciously sweet and with a unique depth of flavour, and although they have a long season, they are certainly worth the wait. Parsnips are a good candidate for filling the hungry gap. If you sow a late variety in well-drained soil, they will happily hold right through winter into the spring, giving you something to eat from the garden during the leaner months. Poorly drained soil combined with root fly damage can cause parsnip canker, a fungal disease which causes the shoulder of the root to become brown, mushy and inedible, ruining the chance of overwintering.

Parsnips are notoriously difficult to germinate; this is usually solved by starting with fresh seed. Seed older than a year will not germinate and is the most likely reason for failure. Purchasing new seed each year, or saving your own will ensure good germination. Waiting the month it takes for germination with not a peep of a seedling is very disheartening and might put you off growing parsnips for life! Exercising patience in the spring is good practice with all sowing and parsnips are no exception. I usually wait until late April/May to sow ‘snips, waiting for the soil to warm up before station sowing* roughly five centimetres apart into drills thirty centimetres apart. Giving them a good amount of space will reduce the need for thinning and will make them easier to weed. Slugs will happily dine out on newly emerging parsnip seedlings, so companion planting with calendula and nasturtium can divert the feasting elsewhere. As germination is slow, why not try growing a catch crop** of radish in between rows. If you sow at the same time as the parsnips, you should be harvesting the radish just as the parsnip seedlings emerge. I have always been told to wait for the first frost before lifting parsnips, as the cold weather intensifies sweetness. There is truth in this, as sugars held in the foliage travel down into the root for winter storage. If you can't wait until then, roast them with honey and thyme to sweeten them up as an essential accompaniment to a Sunday lunch.

*Station sowing - to sow individual seeds

**Catch crop - a quick crop, usually sown between wider spaced rows to utilise bare ground and maximise productivity