Decent tasty parsnips.

Am trying yet again (sob) to grow a tasty, non-forked rooted and non-woody parsnip of a handleably size. Last year my OH wanted them grown in the holes that concrete blocks have which we used to make a raised bed. Some grew to enormous proportions and getting them out took four of us and I'm not doing it again! 
So far, the two veg beds have been cleared of last year's detritus but that's all. OH wants to dig out all the soil then sieve it back so the roots don't fork. Umm. Surely (please don't call me surely) growers don't do that. I'm not planning on digging any manure or compost in it. The soil is loam and of a fairly neutral pH. The other thing is why do they go woody? Is it lack of watering? How to get the best taste is another thing.

your not the only one Goosy as Hampshire said the weather didn't help our parsnips either basically a crop failure so lets try again this year I'm going to try two methods this year on our raised beds

1 make a hole with a metal bare or an old spade handle fill the hole with sand and compost mix sow 2 seeds per station prick out the poorest
 
2 I'm going to try a method using 25ltr drums cut down taking off the bottom and the top of then fill the drum with good sieved soil spent compost and sand again 6 seed per drum space the seed out then thin the seedlings out to about 4 then if the parsnips manage to produce you can just pull the drum off the parsnips

I'm not one for growing massive parsnips so we tend to sow a little later to get a smaller parsnip with tastes better in my opinion and not woody we also have to put a wire fence round our parsnips because the badger also like them to

 a good choice of parsnip Grubbypaws Gladiator that's what we grow hopefully we can start sowing our parsnip seed shortly if the weather gets a tad warmer as I said in my previous reply I'm going to try a new method then you know we mite even get a crop of parsnips this season

(please don't call me surely)

Rodger that.

I sow parsnips very late (end of April). They don't get as big that way. The more home-made compost I put on before sowing, the better they do. (We have deep, silty loam.)
We stop eating them after January & any that are left we move to a corner beside the compost bins & let them flower & set seed for saving. I presume they will get woody but I haven't looked. Home saved seed keeps for several years. I would guess its something to do with physical damage from mechanical cleaning which stops bought seed from keeping.
We started with Tender and True a long time ago so that's probably what we still have! 

Whilst trying to go to sleep last night I had a light bulb moment as you do. Not only was planting parsnips in the small square holes in the concrete blocks a bad idea (BTW, not mine) but, despite the watering they got over the dry summer we had, there was not a lot of soil left around them because as they grew they compressed the new soil in the blocks and also a lot of the water was absorbed by the concrete blocks. We are now getting some more Elegance strawbs to plant where the parsnips were.