Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi all ,just wondering how long i can leave my parsnips in the ground hence the title to the thread.

Till you dig 'em up!
Seriously, they can stand for ages - they are better after a frost, so they say. I've had a couple of mine but I hope to eat them with Christmas dinner. ( and beyond!)

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Updated November 17th - The Big Dig

The only reason to dig them up is to use them! We do take a few out early if it looks like we are going to get a few weeks of hard frost.
By the way if you do not get frosts then to get the sweetening effect, blanch the roots and store in the freezer for a few days, works a treat.

Like the other replies - leave in the ground until you need them! Parsnips, leeks and sprouts all improve if left in the ground until after a frost, and can be left until you need them. Enjoy!.

I was wondering the same thing with carrots. Mine went in very very late - but can I leave them in the ground right up until Christmas? Surely not?

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A simple dude trying to grow veg.

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Carrots should be OK too Wayne. The only problems are likely to be slugs eating the roots, or frost making the ground too hard to lift the crop when you want it. Frozen ground can be sorted (to some extent) by covering with a thick mulch when hard frost is forecast, but I must say it takes a really hard frost to make the ground that solid.

Leave them til you want them Muckman. They just get bigger and bigger.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Our parsnips were getting very tall, the green growth that is, so we pulled them and had some monsters! Quite a few had aphids on the top but only 2 roots were really damaged. I think we'll plant them a little later next year.

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Vegmonkey and the Mrs. - vegetable gardening in a small space in Cheltenham at www.vegmonkey.co.uk

As everyone else says leave them in the ground until you need them. If there is hard frost forcast I dig a few and leave them on the ground. If you dig them up and leave them for too long they will go soft. A couple of weeks is OK.

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Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

Thanx all.

I left my few parsnips in the ground to have for christmas dinner. Sure enough the ground froze totally solid for about a week, but luckily thawed just enough to get them up on christmas eve. Around the tops (around soil level and just under) they were damaged; bright rusty orange coloured, and quite pitted. Is this rust? Or slug damage maybe? I peeled the bad bits off and they tasted alright, but they definitely weren't as healthy as I'd hoped. If it is rust, is there anything you can do organically?

You can leave them right through the winter and into spring - in fact if you leave the odd one longer they will flower - the bees and bugs LOVE the flowers. If you have non F1 varieties you can then seed save and plant again for free - we did this this year and the seeds germinated like no-one's business - straight off the plant and into the ground. AFter thinning we have lovely rows of parsnips again.

LCG

Parsnips are prone to a something called 'canker'. Canker usually only affects the surface and can be peeled off. It might be worth growing a canker resistant variety next year, of which there are many. The soil they are grown in can also make a difference, particularily clay soils which tend to stain the surface.

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Thanks Snadger, I'll look out for canker resistant varieties.

On the other hand, don't leave them in too long - when we took over our big allotment, we were pleased to see a few parsnips struggling through the couch grass.

Pulled them up and roasted them - one of the very few things we've ever cooked which was completely inedible. Discretion was the better part of valour and we gave up trying to chew them when it felt like our teeth were more likely to break than the parsnips were! No idea how long they'd been there...

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http://inelegantgardener.blogspot.com
Updated 13th September