Parsnips

[gregg_muller]

Fatso Parsnip project

2022-07-14T07:00:00Z
About a decade ago I did a big mass cross of parsnip, hoping to develop a stable short fat parsnip, with some local adaptation. I included some Kral seed from the USA when it was legal to bring it in to Oz, and interplanted it with a couple of local lines, and some standard ‘half long’ varieties. Various generations were attempted, ignored, reinvigorated and re sown. getting roots to re-shoot and flower after vernalisation in the fridge was rather hit and miss, with lots of roots rotting.
These beasts were ‘discovered’ in a vacant bed that had grown some of the original Kral seed from one of my growouts - 7 years old i think the seed was - and will be incorporated in a garden bed for future seed collection

[Seeds]

Ray S
Do you mean you sowed seven year old seed?

Gregg M
Yep. It might have been older, I should go and check the seed packet. Edit: couldn’t find the exact packet, but a sibling group was labelled 2014, and sowed a year ago, so 7 years. It confirmed for me the value of homegrown seed, picked fresh, handled properly, and stored well.

Anna M
I love the idea of fat parsnips!!!

Gregg M
Me too, Anna. It’s interesting that of the root crops we are happy to grow and eat round beetroots and turnips and radishes, but parsnips ‘have to be long’. I wanted something that needed less soil prep, and were easier to harvest. I have seen, once, short fat parsnips for sale in Australia - I should have bought some and replanted them, would have shortcut the process.

Thomas P
same story for me: last year I did select for fat parsnips, not long and nearly impossible to dig entirely, even in my sandy soil…

joseph z
How are you finding the flesh quality to the fatties? My experience with parsnips to date has shown the skinnier the more succulent and flavorful and the fatter I went the less amenable they were to non-pithy/hard fleshy fiber. I suppose you could select for this too (derp) but am overall just curious. Cool project!

Gregg M
, I must say I haven’t eaten many of them, mostly saving the fat ones for replanting, and eating the skinny rejects. I’m about to plant a large bed from last year’s seed, so hopefully I will get enough to try a decent sample of the fat ones. There is always the problem of replanting half eaten root crops - I’ve had a lot of the cut carrot roots rot after replanting in previous years.

Justin .
Sorry if this is a silly idea, I’m a total newb, but… could it possibly help to put propolis tincture on the cut parts when planting cut carrots etc.? I make my own propolis tincture, I have not used any commercial one so I suspect mine is fairly different, but anyway I use 96% alcohol and soak raw propolis in it until I have a saturated solution. If I have a cut or infected graze, i drop a drop of it on, and within a few seconds all the alcohol has evaporated, leaving the lovely and flexible propolis coating that after some more seconds isn’t even sticky. Perhaps could this be a good way of giving the cut part of your roots an antifungal antibacterial protective coating? (It seems to even be antiviral also)

[gregg_muller]

I had to look that up. Someone is keeping two hives on my place, so i might hit him up for some next time he opens his hives. Worth a try.
g

[Kimzy (Kim)]

We love parsnips, peel and add to stews with other root crops. Great in beef stew if you eat meats.

[hollyhock (Holly T Hansen)]

Thank you for all your interesting parsnips information. Last season as we planted our parsnips we used a rod to poke an 18” hole in the ground then filled it with a soft organic topsoil mulch mix then planted three seeds on top. They took a long time to sprout but finally made it. The birds ate most of the tender tops. At harvest we got seven parsnips. They were easy to harvest with a small twist and gentle pull.

This year I’m thinking of starting them in empty soup/vegetable cans with the bottoms cut out. Standing them in a tray in the greenhouse or buy the kitchen window. This way we can get them sprouting earlier and get them stronger before going out into the garden. Then stick the whole can into the ground without disturbing the taproot. This would allow the parsnip to grow and not damage it. After it begins to thrive and put on a few good leaves we could twist the can out of the ground carefully so the root could swell and get as fat as it will at the top.

Just an idea I’ve been contemplating in our very short high mountain desert growing season. What are your thoughts?

[WilliamGrowsTomatoes (William Clark Schlegel)]

Joseph Lofthouse did a similar experiment with Kral. I was going to restart it but then someone returned some seed to Joseph. I planted that out and added in my surviving Kral. Then I think since I have ended up sort of forgetting about it. The second generation will flower in 2023 though because I let the patch self seed a bit and I guess 2023 will mark year four of the project. I am so tomato breeding focused I am not finding time to do things like dig up and sort the roots of my parsnip and carrot populations. My older parsnip patches are dominated by Lancer which I think is itself a reselection of Harris because that was the first packet I ever bought of parsnips and it turns out that parsnips become semi-naturalized easily here.

[kdurivage (Kerrianne Durivage)]

This is a bit of a side point, but i have been musing about why parsnips are pretty limited in visual diveraity when compared to other veggies. Why do all parsnips come in white and the same shape? Why are there only a few varieties commercially available? Does this mean it would be hard to accumulate enough genetic diversity to start a parsnip landrace? Or are parsnip varieties genetically diverse and just dont have color and shape variation?

[WilliamGrowsTomatoes (William Clark Schlegel)]

Well, we know from Kral that there is a turnip shaped parsnip. The first and only OSSI parsnip which apparently disappeared was a mix of parsnip varieties Primal Beauty - Open Source Seed Initiative

I think Lancer/Harris are a bit thinner and Turga is thick a bit like Kral but not to the extent. Parsnips Archives - Triple Divide Organic Seeds

Hollow Crown is known for a crown that hollows out.

Wild or feral parsnips seem to also be edible.

So morphological variation does seem to be a bit limited. This isn’t unheard of. It doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t meaningful genetic variation other than for morphological traits. So it would be perfectly possible to make a more genetically diverse population just without the morphological variation to kind of earmark it so that it is visible. However increased hybrid vigor might still result.

In my garden, the older patches of parsnips are likely still dominated by Lancer genetics the first seed packet of parsnip I ever bought when I was just curious to try parsnips because I had never grown them before. That is really only about 5 or 6 generations of parsnip ago as it was about 10 to 12 years ago. I think since they just survived and when I left for a few years they became fewer for awhile, that they likely lost some genetic diversity, then probably regained some from introductions of things like Turga. However, in the main it is really hard to tell. They seem like a vigorous species that can thrive with little care.

Fun fact- according to the book “How to Grow More Vegetables” you can live on parsnips, as well as sunchokes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, salsify, garlic, and leeks. Which has led me to experiment with growing all but sweet potatoes (someday). Though I’ve been doing so in a really lazy way compared to the book which advocates a lot of work. While I concentrate most of my gardening efforts on tomato breeding.

[Joseph_Lofthouse]

I’m still growing descendants of Greg’s cross. Reselecting for short/fat and vigorous growth.

[anon14613632]

I’ve attached a picture of the parsnips I am growing. It’s a few varieties. I’ve picked up several additional since I started this, including Kral.

I am pleased with how they are doing. I have provided almost no care except for a quick weeding in the beginning. I hope they taste good. I think it’s getting close to time for pulling them out, doing my selection, eating and storing to vernalize. This is a first for me so I am kind of feeling my way through this.

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

My parsnips are a mix of a few i collected over the years. They’ve selfseeded in this patch

I’ve selected the strongest growers as well and spread it all over the garden to fend for themselves. Some twenty of them are starting to flower.

[anon14613632]

I noticed the woods behind. Have you ever had rabbits come in there and eat something?

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

Not that i noticed. We don’t have a lot of them anyway. Mice i see an uptick since i put slabs/crusts of bark down in the pathways to block agressive grasses, but feral cats seem to have taken residence since.
I’m looking to grow parsnip in a multispecied covercrop experiment to break up soils and shade out grasses and weeds.

[anon14613632]

I selected my biggest parsnips from last year before or around mid summer. I had them inside a ziplock bag in my fridge up until about a week ago. I then planted them back in the garden. I am pleased they have survived.

[Lowell_McCampbell (Lowell)]

Wow! That is a long time in the fridge. I harvested mine last year around June and put them back out in September-ish. They’re blooming now and survived several freezes rather unbothered. Many rotted when I initially replanted them, however. I suspected I had them in the fridge for too long. I guess not considering how long yours were in the fridge.

[anon14613632]

I did a batch of turnips the same way. They rotted totally. I guess I got lucky with these.

[RobinS (Robin)]

Long-term storage in the fridge makes sense to me based on my experience. It will also help develop the sugars.

Parsnips are one of our favorite veggies, but they need to be grown and allowed to develop sugars or they’re just a starchy root.

Last year I had one batch of parsnips that had been fall-seeded and one batch spring-seeded. We’re in zone 6a so it’s cold and snowy for a lot of the winter but the fall-seeded ones germinated just fine. The fall-seeded patch was much bigger than spring-seeded, both in greens and roots.

I harvested all of the roots in October and replanted the best looking ones in another bed that I reserve for biennial seed propagation since these guys get really big the second year and take up too much space in the main garden. I then store the roots in wood chips in an unheated building to allow the sugars to form. They usually don’t get sweet until December or January. All of them froze in the -25F cold wave we just had, but when I thawed, peeled, and sauteed them in butter they were delicious. There was an almost perfume-like aroma while they were cooking. The flavor and texture was excellent. Oven roasting is another great way to cook them.

So long term storage even with freezing seems to work for me. If they’d frozen before developing the sugars they may not have done well though.

[Kimzy (Kim)]

I grow with companion vegetables here in the lower desert. Anise, bush beans, garlic, onions and radishes, with the parsnips…but grow a colored radish so you can tell the difference at first between root colors at harvest time. Im so used to having mixed rows with seven to eight different things growing, side by side, and having a salad mix to eat every square foot…those giant daikon radishes grow well, i miss harvesting them so the root opens up the soil when it deteriorates. Also add in your rows or patches, edible flowers for the particular growing season. As they flower and grow, so many have edible leaves too…more for the diverse salad. As above, so below…that quote works for the garden too, if i have a patch of sweet potatoes, i also grow companions over the top and intermingled with low growing sweet potato vines. The leaves are delicious and grow over the super hot summers. Zinnia flowers and several herbs do well with the sweet potatoes. .

[anon14613632]

Parsnip selection going to flower, looking good!

[Marvin (Marvin Weber)]

Here in Nova Scotia, Canada, we can usually overwinter parsnips, I’m finding. I am selecting for winter hardy roots so we don’t have to store all of them in the root cellar. They keep much better in the ground, except for those occasional times when we have no snow cover and temperatures below, say, -15C (or about 5F). I’m not sure yet exactly where they are in danger, but if I leave some in the ground and only some of them freeze, I know which ones are not as hardy. Self-elimination. I save seeds from those survivors.
I also allow them to self-seed, so I have volunteer parsnips coming up in the spring.
I’m also selecting for somewhat shorter roots, but I’m not sure sure if I want them totally round like a turnip, as that might make them more susceptible to winter kill. I don’t mind digging a little if I don’t have to store them and eat half wilted roots in late winter–our winter storage season is close to 5 months.