[stompy]

I want to grow parsnips again this year but i dont want to get huge ones.

Last year in may got out my spade and pushed it into the ground, then moved it back and forth all the way accross one of my raised beds to give me a norrow trench.
I then filled this with a mix of 50/50 sand and compost, then station sowed into it.
I got exellent germination and thinned as per instruction.
The plants seemed to be doing well all season and i eagerly awaited harvest time only to be extremely disapointed.
The shoulder of the roots were huge about 4-5inch accross and tapered off dramaticaly to the point of being pretty much useless
I don't want to put a whole year of effort, watering and weeding to once again have a useless crop.
How does everyone else prepare the ground and grow their parsnips?

P.S. the variety i used was javelin.

[Nobbie]

I just level out the ground that was dug the previous autumn and sow in a drill formed by the corner of the rake. My soil tends towards clay, but it's had plenty of organic matter added over the years so isn't too heavy. I seem to get good results with most varieties, although I don't remember using Javelin, so maybe it's a characteristic of the variety?

[gillie]

How deep is your raised bed?

Pictures of the variety Javelin such as this one:
http://www.exhibition-seeds.co.uk/acatalog/Parsnips.html#a68
show a parsnip with a very long narrow root, being used for showing, but not looking much good for cooking.  I guess these are grown in very deep beds.

I suggest you grow a short rooted variety such as White Gem.

Cheers,

Gillie

[DavidT]

I find the best variety to be Gladiator. One tip, when growing parsnips and carrots, DON`T WATER.lol

[stompy]

Hey gillie

That was exactly what my parsnips looked like but with an even bigger shoulder.
I thought that all show veg had to be good for the pot.
Those in your link, and mine most certainly wasn't
Have you used White Gem before ?

Incidently my raised beds including the base soil their sat on is about 18inch's and building every year.

The don't water issue was out of my control due to the amount of rain we had

[gillie]

I grew Tender and True last year, but I have grown White Gem.  I am not sure I could tell the difference.  They were sown rather late after the first lot failed to germinate and I have only lifted one so far.  It was perfect!  Not huge - it just gave the two servings that I wanted - but with a perfectly tender core.

Don't worry too much about the 'don't water' advice.  The important thing is not to give root vegetables  frequent light waterings so that the roots stay near the surface.  In a wet summer the soil will be soaked a long way down and in a dry spell an occasional really thorough watering will at least keep the plants growing.

Cheers,

Gillie

[stompy]

I think i'll try a couple of varieties, just to be on the safe side

[bigben]

Stompy - I had a similar experience with some of mine. I also dug a trench and filled with sifted soil mixed with a bit of sand. Got a good grop after slow germination. Some are perfect, others are wide at the top and go down to nothing and others have forked. However even the less than perfect ones are enough to chop the top and bottom of and still get something. I used Gladiator and will do the same again next year but I think I need a deeper trench and perhaps a finer sieve.

[Trillium]

For a person who isn't over keen on parsnips, I can grow real whoppers. I prefer swedes but grow parsnips to add to soups. And contrary to usual advice, here's what I do.

Parsnips will get planted in the deepest soil area I have in my sloping beds (sloping only because that's how the land is). In fall I rotovate it deeply as I can, add all the organic things I can like masses of dried leaves (which shatter when rotatovated), masses of chicken manure (yes, I do manure my snips and they rarely fork contrary to popular opinion), compost if I have any left and a few handfuls of bonemeal. The works get rotovated in every fall and left until spring (mostly because the manure is fresh). come early May I direct seed the parsnips as I've found they do better than being transplanted, water every few days until I see them pop up, then leave them to it. Its important to keep them well weeded. Come fall, I must use a garden fork to dig up the monsters working their way to China. Honestly. Only a few fork because I still have a lot of stones in the soil and the snips hit the occasional stone and fork.

That's why it's important to know your garden well. Other parts of my garden hit hardpan in 12" or so, so parsnips would do badly there. My whole garden is clay with hardpan/gravel below, the clay soil added after the house was built, the septic system added, and the grounds 'landscaped', and a token veg garden added.  By forking over the soil in search of rocks (and I've dug out some whoppers that took 2 people to take out), I quickly found where the deepest areas are for specific root crops, and shallower areas are that beans and sweet peppers will happily grow in.