[sion01]

Im sorry if this subject has been covered before but her goes.I always thought that root veg couldn't be transplanted but the amount of parsnip and carrot seedlings that are sold at the garden centre that i occasionally work at has made me think that i was wrong all along.If sown my parsnips at three seeds per station and are at the size now where the weakest two would be pulled out.It would be great if i could transplant them as I have room for most of the extra's but as parsnips have such a long growing season i don't want to dedicate a lot of ground to something that is doomed to fail.Has anybody any experience of transplanting them?

[DD.]

Parsnips have to be transplanted very carefully. The act of pulling them out to thin them easily damages the fine roots and the end of the tap root.

[fatcat1955]

Give them a swish in a bucket of water and they seperate easily.

[solway cropper]

Garden centres should be prosecuted for selling carrot and parsnip seedlings to the unsuspecting public. The chances of a novice gardener getting anything other than tangled forked roots after transplanting is remote.

Sow them direct and thin out if you have to. Even sown now you should still get something worth eating.

[RaptorUK]

Sow them direct and thin out if you have to. Even sown now you should still get something worth eating.

 . . . or chit them and sow the chitted seeds . . . never grown Parsnips before and it worked for me.

[JayG]

I have successfully transplanted parsnip seedlings in the past, but it requires extreme care getting them out and replanting them without either bending or damaging the roots, which are surprisingly long even when very young.

I normally trim the tops off rather than pull out any unwanted seedlings if they are very close to the ones I want to keep to avoid damaging the latter.

My soil is sandy which helps a lot - I think successful transplanting would be almost impossible with a much heavier soil.

[Snoop]

My soil is sandy which helps a lot - I think successful transplanting would be almost impossible with a much heavier soil.

My soil is improving, but in the past I've had clay that baked rock hard in the sun. Still does in places. I started seeds off in quite deep paper pots (think 2/3rds of a standard hair spray can) and then planted the paper pots out once the seeds had germinated. The parsnips weren't pretty, but they were of a decent size. And any parsnip is better than no parsnip. Planting such a long paper pot requires a certain amount of perseverance in very firm soil...

This year, like last, my dogs have run riot over the parsnips. I'm about to start again, this time in paper pots. Really have to think of some kind of dogproofing for them once they're in the ground.

[Yorkie]

Garden centres should be prosecuted for selling carrot and parsnip seedlings to the unsuspecting public. The chances of a novice gardener getting anything other than tangled forked roots after transplanting is remote.

Sow them direct and thin out if you have to. Even sown now you should still get something worth eating.

I chose to buy them last year (or was it the year before - I forget  ) when my germination failed completely.  It was an informed decision ...

None of mine were forked, even though the leaves were really tall ...


































They'd corkscrewed! 

[sion01]

I wont waste time trying to grow the thinnings on then.They are in the ground already i just sow three seeds in a line at 6 inch intervals so they are at the right spacing.