Forking Parsnips

[DazzerelliParticipant]

Hi Charles,

I hope your new garden is going well! I’m sure we’re all looking forward to reports of your escapades.

I’ve grown Parsnips for the first time this year. I sowed them in early March and germination was good. The plans have grown very big and the roots are of a good size. About 70% of them a forked. There is plenty of usable Parsnip for the kitchen and the taste is good but I was wondering if there was anything that I might be doing, or could do, to reduce the forking?

Cheers,

Darren

[Pete BuddParticipant]

I think your soil may be too rich Darren. Parsnips and carrots prefer a poor soil. Some would say that stony soil would cause the same problem but I have never found that to be the case. For example; I have a new allotment, with a sandy, stony soil which, with no digging or preparation/enrichment of any sort, has produced outstanding parsnips and carrots this year.

Cheers

Pete

[charlesModerator]

 That sounds good Pete although I find excellent growth of straight roots in compost enriched soil, even in beds filled with compost and well rotted manure, with high yields. SoI am not sure and wonder if Darren has some other issue – in fact Darren you could email me a low res picture which I can upload, if you can bear it!

As for the new garden, I have had no time there yet as I am so busy harvesting at Lower and tidying up.

[DazzerelliParticipant]

Hi Charles,

In the picture that I sent to you, the two Parsnips to the left were sown in my garden at home on 25th February and harvested on 27th October. The two Parsnips to the right were sown at my allotment on 25th March and harvested on 28th October. They are both grown from the same packet of Gladiator seeds. I dug up only two Parsnips from each site, the ones in the picture are not specially selected and are representative of what I’ve been digging up from each site recently.

The home grown Parsnips to the left were harvested the day before the photograph was taken and so have lost some of their whiteness. The larger one weights 750gm. They were grown in a 120x240cm raised bed that was double dug from grass 5 years ago. The soil was so hard and stony that I had to use a pick axe. Deeper than 30cm there is mostly Orange coloured clay. Many stones were removed but many remain. No organic matter was, or has ever been, incorporated. The bed has since been undug and annual surface mulches have been applied: horse manure, home-made compost, old potting compost, alfalfa pellets from the tortoise, leaf mould, in fact any organic matter that I could get my hands on. The soil surface is now about 10-15cm higher than the surrounding area. Harvesting has been very difficult as the roots are so long and the underlying soil so hard, but as the weekend, after the recent rains harvesting was a little easier.

The allotment grown Parsnips to the right were grown on raised beds without sides, the soil having been scraped from the paths to make the beds slightly raised. They were dug two years ago, but not again since then. 5cm of well rotted horse manure was applied in autumn last year. Other than that no other organic matter has been applied. When I dug the soil it was very easy to work with, very few stones, deep, soft and crumbly. It must have a good clay content though, as the ground does crack a bit when it’s dry and the soil can be very sticky in wet weather, as is also the case in my garden. Harvesting is easy as the soil is so easy to work with.

The results have surprised me. Given what I have read about ideal Parsnip growing conditions, the results are exactly the wrong way round.

Cheers,

Darren

[charlesModerator]

 

So here are the parsnips, a dramatic difference.
i do not know what has caused this any more than you Darren, one could theorise a lot for sure. How about carrots, have you grown any at your allotment and how are they?

For comparison here are my parsnips grown in undug, fertile clay with a 5cm mulch on top of well decomposed cow manure, sown mid March:
 and they are also Gladiator

[DazzerelliParticipant]

Carrots have not been good this year. I couldn’t get them to germinate, or perhaps the slugs got them. Some from the third sowing survived and went on to form small roots with many being overly-stubby – like the main bit of the Parsnip to the right in the picture. Last year my Carrots got first place in the allotment show, in both the Carrot and the Funny Wonky veg sections! Lots of nicely formed good sized roots, with maybe just 10% misshapen. Maybe this year, the later sowings got hit by the dry period mid-year before roots had time to tap into deeper moister soil.

[Author]

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