Kitchen Garden Forum

Following on from me raving about the germination and growth rate of Palace F1 last year, I've been pulling a lot of very large parsnips over the past month or two and they taste fabulous.

I put my new Palace F1 seeds to germinate last Sunday. They started germinating on Wednesday and I have now planted over a 100 into kitchen roll tubes.

I'd recommend these above any other parsnip I've tried (this being the operative word) to grow.

Evening Chantal,
If you feel the urge to change your choice of parsnips,do try "Lisbonnais" from Wallis Seeds.Everyone that I have given my "spares" to say that they are the best they"ve tasted "and can we have some more, please".
They are the nicest I"ve tasted ,whichever way they were cooked, and will be growing them again this year.

Thanks Snooky, but I'm sticking with Palace for now. They do taste great, but the germination is the thing that draws me too them.

Within a week I had 100% germination which is amazing and even better than last year.

I am however, going to experiment this year and sow another packet direct into the soil. If they germinate as well direct sown then I can cut out the middle man, so to speak.

I'll report back.

It will be interesting to see how quickly they germinate in the soil Chantal because the slow germination rate of parsnips is a real bugbear for me. You sow them and never know whether they've died so so another row and then they often start appearing and you have too many. I've tried the wet tissue paper route with White Gem this year and even using that speedier route it was almost 3 weeks before the first shoots appeared. So I'm making a diary note for next Spring about Palace F1 and will get some seeds in. Are they a well known variety and do you know who sells them?

Hi Primrose

They're Johnson's seeds and sold at Wilkinson's amongst other places.

In the greenhouse the first half dozen seedlings are showing their heads which is pretty damn good as they were still in the packet 9 days ago.

I'm hoping to get the new batch in the ground at the weekend, if the weather's nice.