[vegebabble]

Hi - I've seen that parsnips need to be planted before mid-march.  I'm just wondering do I sow the seeds straight in the ground - seems so cold and wet, not sure they'd survive!  Or, can I start of indoors on a windowsill and then plant out??
This will be my first year trying parsnips, so any general advise on them would be good too!! 

Many thanks!
Vegebabble x

[DD.]

They don't need to be sown that early.

There have been a lot of threads on this recently, try a search.

Here's one to kick you off:

http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=51612.0

[kingston boy]

I put my parsnips in about the last week of March last year and they are excellent. I have about 3-4 left and they are about 3.5 inches across at the top so worry ye not. They will also germinate better being sown later

[Rangerkris]

Hi From another Kent member, i got some parsnips in the dining room and they seem to be taking ages to start showing through.  I started mine in long paper pots hoping to go into the ground in a few week time.

[raymo1]

Just a note! I tried growing my parsnips in tiolet rolls so that I knew I had good germination and didn't disturb them during planting. They all failed to grow downwards, and they swelled in the rolls. This year I'm going back to planting in the ground, however late that is.

Best wishes regards Raymo.

[Kristen]

i got some parsnips in the dining room and they seem to be taking ages to start showing through

They can take ages to germinate ...

If you can be fagged you can put some seed on damp kitchen paper (in a Tupperware box or somesuch) and then as soon as it has a little root pop it in one of your paper pots (you might need tweezers ... I said it was a fag!)

One thing that caught me out last year.  I put 2 or 3 seeds in each paper pot, they didn't seem to do anything, so I did the kitchen paper and tweezers lark. Planted them out, got nice foliage, left them to it ... harvested them, and several had 2 or 3 wrapped around each other.  I reckon the additional seeds germinated, eventually, and I never noticed them in the plot!

So some "thinning" may be in order later on in the season ...

[Rangerkris]

I did mention chitting some seed to my wife as she done our corn last year and there was 2 that never sent out a shoot, i think mine are starting to shoot now they were sown 11 days ago just feels longer than that i guess.

[bigben]

Last year I sowed direct around March and nothing seemed to come, I then sowed a load more in paper pots on a warm windowsill and they germinated really well. I used my bulb planter and put these outside. Then of course the original stuff popped up and I ended up with lots. I dug up the last of them just last night and froze them in batches after blanching for 10 min. Like someone else said - some were multiple sowings and ended up twined round each other - this made for a long night peeling.