Kitchen Garden Forum

My crop of parsnips taste lovely, nice and big and firm. My only problem is that have 3 to 4 stems, twisted and some growing sideways. I planted them on virgin ground and free from manure. Can anyone help me out so I can grow straight parsnips. Cheers

Morning dd, multiple stems are caused by the growing tip being damaged by something, fresh manure, stones or hard ground are all culprits.

so if I dig it over and use same spot the ground should be finer and possibly get straight ones.

The better and finer the soil, the better your parsnips will be...

We once made deep cone-shaped holes, filled them with potting compost and grew the parsnips in there. They weren't exhibition quality, but they were certainly less twisted than in our usual soil which rather stony. So you might try that, DD.

Nowadays I just use them as they are, forks, twists and all.

We have very stoney ground. I expected it to affect my parsnips and cause them to fork badly yet surprisingly it doesn't although my carrots do to a much greater extent. I suspect this is because they grow smaller and are not as strong or big as parsnips in pushing stones out of the way. Anyway, we rarely eat parsnips whole and they usually get cut up for cooking so it probably doesn't matter too much. You're doing well to be cropping yours already. I haven't checked mine yet but don't normally start digging them out until end October or November. (Still currently trying to eat the bean mountain !)

I could see the shoulders of one of my parsnips today...about 3" diameter

However, even after multiple sowings, we only have about 10 of them!

I envy you all - parsnips crooked or straight are non existent in my allotment this year. Four sowings, all fresh including a trial pack & none grew. Now my neighbours parsnips from last year which he has left standing have all grown all around my plot in the last couple of weeks, literally hundreds of them.

I know it is too late to get anything substantial but scooped up some seeds that were on the top of the mesh on the cabbages & popped them in a spare patch - all germinated of course! Maybe a mini finger of parsnip for Xmas lunch??

Westi

. If we have a mild winter they will probably give you a crop of miniature vegetables like they serve in posh restaurants such as mini corn in the cob, for which you are charged a small fortune. Covering with cloches or fleece now may help too.

Westi, I have long since given up sowing parsnips direct and always grow them the "Johnboy method", much discussed on this forum in the past: germinate the seeds on damp kitchen paper, sow the germinated seeds with pincers into individual cells (I use roottrainers) and plant them out when they have grown into sturdy small plants. Bingo!

Dear Westi, i have some that have only been through for a couple of weeks, but i'm confident of getting fresh young parsnips off them.