I have always found that my crop of parsnips is always better if I grow them in soil that has been really well manured from an earlier crop and the reason for this is that if the soil is newly manured then parsnips are more likely to have forked roots.

I sow my parsnips from seed and I make the drills 1” deep and 12” apart. I normally sow 3 seeds together and then rake the soil over the drills very lightly so that it covers the seeds. They usually take around 3 weeks to germinate but this is not a rule of thumb.

When I think they are large enough I thin the seedlings out to so they are 6” apart. If the weather turns dry, I always make sure that my parsnips get plenty of water because they really don't like it when the soil dries out completely. I keep on top of the weeds the whole time by hoeing in between the parsnips during the whole time they are growing.

As the winter sets in and the tops die back, I leave my parsnips in the ground and harvest them as I need them. If the weather looks like it is going to be cold and the ground frozen, I lift what I need to keep in reserve. By February I usually have quite a few left in the vegetable garden and it is now that I harvest these and store them away. To do this I cut the green tops off the parsnips and lay the roots on some dry sand in a wooden box and then I simply cover them with more dry sand. I then place the boxes in a dark shed making sure they get plenty of air around them and they keep for ages.

One trick I learnt on how to harvest my parsnips easily, was to dig a trench along side them so it made it easier to get them out of the ground without them breaking.