Parsnip roots - lots of them

Welcome to the site 

When did you sow the seed?

Did you sow it in clumps or individually spaced out?

Have you grown them successfully before?  If so, what have you done / what has been different this year?

The weather / watering may well be the answer but it always helps to eliminate other possibilities first.

seed sown 11 April - fresh bed in the rotation - no muck applied - just dug and prepared - bed had squash/muck in it last year - seed watered till germination and for a couple of weeks after - no piped water to the allotment - and it was a very dry spring here - water scarce

previous years - very good crop - a mainstay of our winters

Parsnips like deep, light soil because they have long roots, and fresh manure does encourage forking of the roots, but that doesn't mean they appreciate being starved to death!

My parsnips improved hugely after I realised they were not fulfilling their potential due to lack of food in my sandy soil. An occasional sprinkle with Growmore does the trick for me (don't use anything too high in nitrogen which will encourage too much leaf growth.)

I put a sprinkling of chicken pellets over the ground in Jan this year and have (a couple of times) watered with dilute comfrey feed. I haven't dug any snips up yet but they look good n healthy in the rows 

Hi, sorry to hear your parsnips are looking spindly!  
Can I ask what you are growing next to them- as that might be having an effect?
You can't grow parsnips and carrots next to each other, for example as they stunt each others growth.

I've spent the summer reading about Allelopathy,   which forms a basis for much of the ideas behind companion planting, where certain plants put out chemicals in the soil that prevents competing plants from flourishing, or sometimes even germinating, Black Walnut is famous for it, and pine trees also notorious.  :blink:
On a more minor scale- plants like fennel can devastate the growth of many veggies. (From all accounts, it seems to be incompatible with most plants!!)  

But there are some plants that benefit from growing next to each other too.

Companion planting is one of those things- the more you know- the more complicated and confusing it gets to put together a rotation plan  
I'm opting to only take heed of the ones that are a complete no no... keeping the carrots and parsnip away from each other, and the onions and legumes away from each other...   .. and not growing fennel!!!!

Quote from: TheSpartacat on October 06, 2010, 12:30

I'm opting to only take heed of the ones that are a complete no no... keeping the carrots and parsnip away from each other

You'd better re-write the books then, as I grow both together in order to grow them under one bit of Enviromesh and my parsnips are quite famous on this forum!

Wow... now I'm super confused... I've seen your parnsips!    
The 'keeping carrots and parsnips away from each other' was the one that all the sites and books all completely agreed on!
Well, now I'm just feeling grumpy... coz I'm gonna have to rethink my rotation plan for next year again!!
 

*Sets fire to books as they're more valuable as potash, apparently*

Apart from hot tropical weather  we are blessed with good fine carrot and snip growing sand, nowt else grows in it tho  .
I have to admit that I am clueless as to why your snips are missbehaving, the only logical reasoning I can now think of, is there something in the soil from the past that is still hanging around.
Have they been grown in that bed before without any problems?