Most people love to eat parsnips with a roast dinner, but parsnips can be eating in many delicious ways, I love them in soups.

Parsnips are fairly easy to grow, and they don’t need a lot of looking after in the garden. Also a great thing about parsnips is that they can be left in the ground until you want to eat them.

If you sow the parsnips in spring and they will be ready to eat in autumn. Parsnips prefer to grow in an open, sunny garden and even though they aren’t fussy, they prefer lighter soil that has some depth so they can grow the roots down more easily into the ground.

Parsnips do not like a stony soil. They also don’t like to be sown in modules as the roots will not grow as well, that’s because parsnips don’t like to be transplanted.

That’s why it’s important to sow parsnips directly into the ground, you can make a row in the ground and sow the seeds thinly, or sow two to three at 10cm apart, 2cm deep, in rows 20cm apart.

My personal preference is to make a row and then using a dipper make a hole into the ground, then backfill the hole and sow 1 to 2 seeds in each hole, then cover the seed lightly and water. And if the weather is still cooler then you can cover the seeds with the cloche or the fleece.

You can start sowing in February but for my area that is too early, so I start sowing parsnips in March, April, and early May, these sowings do much better for me. Parsnips prefer their soil to be warmed up so if the soil is cold you can warm the area up by putting a cloche over the soil, or put some fleece onto the soil as this will warm the ground up. It can take 2 to 4 weeks for the seeds to germinate.

As the seedlings come up take the cloche or fleece off. And when the parsnip seedling have developed two true leaves, you can thin the seedlings out and leave the strongest seedling in place. Make sure the soil stays weed free, its best to weed by hand rather than using a hoe, as this can damage the top of the plant.

I water the seed for the first 6 weeks to establish the seedlings. If it’s dry during the growing season then I would recommend that you also water the parsnips as this will prevent the parsnip root from splitting. Water the plant thoroughly as if you water little and often then the root will stay shallow and you want the root to grow deep.

It’s always been said that you should leave the parsnip in the ground until the first frost, it is said that if the parsnip root has been lightly frosted then they have a better flavour. But that isn’t what I do as in the south where we live the frost can be very late in the season.  So I start lifting the parsnips when the leaves die down in autumn. Using a garden fork you can carefully ease them out of the ground.