How to Grow Parsnips

Parsnips are a joy to eat as a vegetable with a great flavour—and gorgeous roasted. A fantastic addition to any roast or Christmas dinner, roasting these with a honey drizzle makes them that much tastier. Sowing these vegetable seeds is easy to grow, as they need little maintenance and can be left in the soil until ready to use. 

In addition, there are exhibition seeds that you can grow, such as Parsnip Javelin F1, that produce excellent, uniform roots as well as disease-resistant vegetable seeds, such as Parsnip Panorama F1, that can make growing problem-free.

So, if you’re looking to find out how to grow parsnips, we’ve put together this comprehensive guide to help you do so. Here, you can find plenty of expert tips on each stage of growing parsnip seeds, as well as some of our customers too.

Parsnips do best in an open, sunny spot with well-fertilised, lighter, well-drained soil. It’s important that your soil is ​​deep, as roots can grow quite large, up to a foot in length. 

Making sure the ground is prepared well before sowing parsnips is important to healthy growth. Stony or heavy soil can cause misshapen roots, so take a look at our customer tips section if this is the case for you, where we provide further advice on how to grow parsnips in these conditions.

Sow your parsnip seeds around February to April, direct in their final growing position. It’s recommended to start parsnip seeds outdoors rather than indoors, as transplanting them can cause roots to become misshapen.

You should sow your seeds a half-inch (1.5cm) deep, spacing the rows 18in (45cm) apart. Although it is normally recommended to start sowing in February, this can lead to failure in colder, northern areas. Sowings made when the soil is warmer in March and April, and even early May, will do much better here. Alternatively, you can warm the soil before sowing with garden cloches or similar and leave them in place until the seedlings have developed two true leaves.

Parsnips can be difficult to germinate, so it’s important that you sow fresh parsnip seeds and adhere to the advice above to sow them at the right time. Germination can take a while, with parsnip seeds taking up to three weeks to sprout, so patience is key.

Water your seeds regularly until they’re well established. When the seedlings are about one inch (2.5cm) high, thin out to 9in (23cm) apart.

Watering

Parsnips don’t need as much water as some other vegetable seeds, so should only be watered during dry spells to ensure the soil stays evenly moist. Very dry soil can lead to roots splitting, however, so be sure to water when needed.

Weeding

Keeping the soil weed-free helps to prevent your parsnips from competing for nutrients and from being smothered by other plants. This is especially important while they’re young. However, their thick foliage should prevent weeds from developing once vigorously growing. You should opt to hand-weed rather than using tools, as this prevents the roots from being damaged.

Mulching

Adding a layer of mulch, such as garden compost, over your parsnip seeds can help to prevent weeds and keep soil moist. Dry soil can lead to split roots and parsnip canker, so this is a useful step in maintaining healthy growth.

The best time to harvest parsnips is from November to March. Start lifting roots when the foliage starts to die down in autumn. Use a fork to carefully lift them to keep the roots intact.

They can be left in the soil until required, although lifting a few extra in November will ensure you have parsnips to eat, even if the soil becomes frozen. Lightly frosted roots tend to produce the best flavour, so it can be worth waiting until a frost before harvesting as a result. They can also be stored in a 'clamp' or boxes of sand, which can keep for up to four months.

You shouldn’t generally find that you have many problems when growing parsnips. However, there are a couple of common problems that can crop up that can be prevented or solved through these ways:

• Carrot fly - Carrot fly feeds off parsnips, so covering your parsnips with garden netting can help to keep them from your plants.
• Canker - Parsnip canker is a fungal disease that can damage roots by causing them to rot. This can occur in poor growing conditions, such as when soil is either especially wet, heavy or especially dry. Parsnips can also be affected when roots are damaged.

Ensuring you use well-drained soil, avoiding under or overwatering and sowing canker-resistant varieties, such as Parsnip Countess F1 and Parsnip Sabre F1, are all effective methods of prevention.

Customer Tips

We ran a survey and asked our valued customers to send in their top tips for successfully sowing and growing parsnips. Some of these can be found in our catalogues, but we’ve compiled them below to give you some extra insight.
We will note that we haven't tried all of the tips below, but they may offer a valuable look into how others approach their parsnip growing! However, we do have one last additional tip to mention:

• Heavy or stony soil - If your soil is heavy or particularly stony, make a deep hole with a metal pole or crowbar and fill with compost or a mixture of compost and soil. Sow three seeds and for an earlier crop, cover the seeds or seedlings with a glass jar or a plastic lemonade bottle with the bottom cut off.

The following are our customers’ best tips:

• Removing stones - Dig the ground well beforehand to remove stones; they will distort the shape.
• Using vermiculite - I put some vermiculite into a clear plastic container, water it, mix in the seeds and put the lid on. When the seeds have germinated and developed a reasonable length of root and stem, I tease them out of the vermiculite and put them in a container with a little water in it so that they don’t dry out. To plant each seedling, I make a dibber hole and then hold it over the hole whilst watering in soil, rather like planting leeks. It is rather fiddly but guarantees full rows.
• Sowing in drills - Buy fresh seed. I germinate them on damp kitchen paper and place them in a well-prepared drill at the correct spacing as the root appears, marking where I have got to.
• Comprehensive tips - Have a dedicated deep parsnip bed with well-sieved compost. Pre-chit the seeds to ensure germination has taken place, but once it has, get them planted as soon as possible. Make a dibbed hole in compost; backfill the hole with seed compost up to 1/2" from the top of the hole. Place seed in hole and cover. Water in, but then don't water unless there is a heatwave. Cover with fleece against carrot fly. Leave until after the first frosts for harvesting.
• Using toilet roll tubes - Chit seeds on damp kitchen paper. Transfer to toilet roll tubes of potting compost in the greenhouse until established. Plant carefully in prepared ground.
• Parsnips and radishes -I always plant radishes in the same drills at the same time as l plant parsnips. The radishes mark the rows where the parsnips are and are gone by the time the parsnips come up.
• Using toilet rolls and greenhouses - Plant seeds individually in toilet roll centres, cover with plastic until germination. Place in cold greenhouse, then plant out in position when 3 to 4 inches tall.

Now that you know how to grow parsnips, you can get started on growing for a delicious addition to many meals! At D.T. Brown, you can find many quality parsnip seeds to produce healthy-growing, uniform roots. With many F1 varieties available, as well as exhibition seeds, you can find superior seeds in our diverse selection. For even more dependable vegetables to grow, you can also discover many vegetable seeds and vegetable plants to keep your garden cropping throughout the year in our collection.

For more step-by-step guides and many other useful gardening tips, be sure to explore our gardening blog where you can find even more handy advice from our experts.

If you’re interested in learning more about our selection of fruit seeds, flower seeds, herb seeds or anything else in our range, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we’ll happily answer any questions you may have.