Kitchen Garden Forum

Our parsnips this year have been badly attacked by canker, some are almost 'consumed' by it. The variety is Countess which I have grown for the last three or four years without any problem. Was it the wet weather this year or what?

And is Avonresister really resistant to canker? If so, I might try it next year.

I recently dug up our first parsnip - White Gem if I remember correctly, and it too was rather badly affected. We've had such a dry autumn here that I was reduced to watering those vegetables still left in the vegetable patch to stop them wilting, and it's only in the past fortnight that we've had really torrential rains and soggy soil, so I'm wondering whether canker would develop that quickly. It will be interesting to see whether anybody else has been affected. I don't normally start digging up my single parsnip row until early/mid December when the frosts start arriving, but couldn't resist an early forage to see how big (or small !!) they'd grown.

I started digging mine last month. Turga from OGC seed about 3 years old. I've also got Tender and True, which I am waiting to dig this Christmas and in january.

I have found that an early sowing of parsnips gives a good autumn crop and a later one can be made for the winter. And I have had good crops of parsnips from 3-year-old seed, if not 4. I keep the seeds in the fridge in a pill bottle of brown glass with a silica-gel damp=preventor inside.

As for canker, yes, we've got a little, but nothing to speak of. Our soil is about 6.5 pH and is basically clay. This year I put a lot of leafmould on the bed the previous winter and it seems to have done the trick.

Thanks for your replies. I am going to grow next year's parsnips on a piece of ground which has never had parsnips on before and has not been manured for about three years. So, hopefully, with a bit of better weather, too, we'll not have a canker repeat! I will also check the pH of it.

I've grown Countess for the third year and have no canker whatsover. Tender and True are also good but much smaller in similar ground conditions.

Tried White Gem in the past with mixed results. Will continue to grow them but they usually end up in soup.

Hi Monika - I'm glad you posted this thread as I thought it was just me with rotten parsnips. I grow Countess and have the same problem as you this year, but not on the whole crop. My plot has a slight slope and the worst canker seems to be on the parsnips at the bottom of the slope. So I put it down to the exceedingly wet weather we've had. I'm going to grow them next year at the top of the slope and see what happens. I'm loath to stop growing Countess as they taste absolutely fantastic.