How to Grow No Dig Parsnips - Quick Bed Prep - video Dailymotion

Charles Dowding

No dig sowing and growing is simple and rapid. Harvesting parsnips however, may require a spade, depending on your soil. Parsnips grow best in moist, temperate climates and they can become large, making a significant store of food during the winter.  Filmed through 2021 at Homeacres by Edward Dowding freelance filmmaker https://edowdingfilms.onfabrik.com  00:00 Intro - best time to sow parsnips 00:30 Bed preparation 00:51 Timing of parsnips harvests 01:29 Example of harvesting method 01:43 Reason for planting in rows, and recommended spacing 02:53 Demo of creating a drill for sowing 03:46 The importance of moisture for germination, and when/how to water drills 05:27 Reason for using fleece cover 06:00 Demo of sowing parsnip seeds in the drill 08:05 How to manage any weeds, with a demo of using a hoe 09:36 Re-covering with fleece 09:53 Showing growth 23 days later, then 2 months later 10:43 7 months later, describing conditions and growth 12:10 Demo of harvesting parsnips  16:07 Explanation of canker disease 19:47 Explanation of carrot root fly (on parsnips)  Learn more about growing parsnips in my 'From Seed to Harvest' lesson, available from my website: https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/from-seed-to-harvest-22-parsnips/ There are 30 'From Seed to Harvest' lessons available, in which I explain 40 of the most popular vegetables in detail. They can be bought individually:  https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product-category/fsth-individual-lessons/ ...or as a whole course:  https://charlesdowding.co.uk/product/from-seed-to-harvest-online-course/  Check out these videos on growing beetroot and onions which show an alternative way to grow vegetables, in contrast to sowing direct. Beetroot: https://youtu.be/qPVHCh1cDMw Onions: https://youtu.be/1k0f4GoC6Zw  You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join  To buy my collections of super informative video garden guides with an encyclopaedic search function, visit Retrieve with whom we partner https://charlesdowding.retrieve.com/store/#/

Transcript

00:05Parsnips. Time to spring into action is early spring. Around the equinox actually here is a

00:14really good time to sow parsnips and that's actually what I did here. So we can see the

00:20results of that early sowing. I've brought along a few tools to show you examples of what you might

00:29use to do it. And in terms of bed preparation, you do want it reasonably smooth. I never sieve compost

00:39here.

00:40I'd like to get it on in the autumn and then winter weather breaks it down. And then you can

00:44use a rake

00:44just to skim over the surface and make it smooth and soft. And then sow the seeds. Parsnips are

00:52a long-term vegetable. They benefit from being in the ground longer than carrots. So what we're

00:59sowing now in March, April, early spring is for harvesting from autumn onwards, not in the summer.

01:08I mean, you cut them if you want, actually, if you like little parsnips. That is possible.

01:12It's just that the most value really comes from taking advantage of how they stand in cold weather

01:18and actually improve in flavor. They get sweeter with frost and they will stand a lot of frost. So

01:23you can look at them as a kind of larder in the soil or food that you can come to

01:28in the winter. And

01:29this is no dig here, but there is some digging involved to get parsnips out sometimes, not always.

01:36There's one little trick actually where you push down on the parsnip first and then pull, and that can

01:40help to get them out. So these already sown rows coming up. I do rows across because

01:49I find that actually works better. Say you need to weed, you can put your foot to reach the middle.

01:55You can put your foot between the rows along. Rows along are possible. If it was rows along on a

02:00bed this

02:00which is around four foot wide, 1.2 meters, I would do four rows maximum, maybe three even actually.

02:09It depends a bit what you want. Spacing is to some extent your call. Do you want really big parsnips

02:14or do you want lots of medium ones?

02:17And the spacing I've gone for here is quite close actually, looking at it. It's just under a foot. It's

02:24about

02:2411 inches between each row and then within the row I've got some thinning to do.

02:30I'm very happy always to sow a few more seeds, but in my case I'm looking to have parsnips about

02:36every

02:37three inches, say seven centimeters, and that'll give quite big ones all been well.

02:43So yeah, I'm seeing this. I've got one there, one there, one there. At the moment they're about one centimeter

02:48apart

02:49and we'll see why in a minute because the seed is quite small and light.

02:54So in terms of what tool to use to make a drill, if I go from the simplest to the

02:58more complicated,

02:58or you could use your, if your soil is soft like this, you could use your hands.

03:05You know, this compost, in traditional gardening books it says that you shouldn't spread compost

03:10before sowing parsnip and carrot because it makes them fork. This is totally untrue and I think it's

03:16because it's assumed that that compost is being dug in and that it's more the digging that causes the

03:22forking. With no dig, you get very little forking and they just go straight down. So there's an option.

03:29If your soil is not quite so amenable, you could use a tool like this. Or even the corner of

03:34a rake,

03:36you do want a reasonably deep drill. Parsnips generally, I would sow deeper than carrots,

03:42even though the seed's not much bigger. And that's because the big defining characteristic

03:48about parsnips is how long they take to germinate. They don't appear within two weeks.

03:54And that means that they, it needs to be moist around that germinating seed and small seedling

04:01for quite a long time, which means that if you sow, say when the soil is moist and then the

04:06weather is dry,

04:08there's a strong risk that the soil will dry before the, around the seed before it's had time to get

04:14its root down into the moisture below. And that's one reason for early sowing because it's more likely

04:19you'll have that moisture early on in the spring. Another possibility, funnily enough, particularly

04:26in our climate that seems to work well, is June sowing because we can't often have rain in June

04:31after a dry spring. So that will only give smaller parsnips for winter, but it's still okay.

04:37So you need to tailor your sowing a bit, perhaps according to your climate.

04:40And then you can do this sort of thing where

04:45with sowing seeds, it's more effective to put the water right where the seed is.

04:50In this case, it's called a drill. So in the drill,

04:55putting quite a decent amount. Because it's dry, we've not had rain here for four weeks.

05:01So what you're seeing on the surface is quite dusty. We've watered this bed twice since sowing the

05:08parsnips. But when I got them in on March 21st here, so that's nearly five weeks ago, the

05:16soil was still damp from winter and I didn't water at all. And so I left them for two weeks

05:21and maybe

05:22even three actually, and then gave some water just to make sure that all the seed was coming up. But

05:37that's a means of improving your chances of success with the germination. And it stops animal scuffing

05:44as well. Like we get rabbits here that just come and dig holes at random and they'd love this.

05:49The fleece, in my case anyway, keeps off. I'm just going to put another little bit of water in there.

05:54So what I'm looking to achieve with that is to get the drill really moist.

06:00And then another characteristic of parsnip seeds, as well as the time they take to germinate, is they're very

06:07very light, although they're quite big. And

06:13this means that in a breeze like we've got today, if you're not careful, they'll blow away

06:16as you drop them in. So hold them close to the

06:23drill you've made. And I did something like that.

06:27So I've got there now more seeds than I actually want to grow, but that's definitely how you want

06:35to do it because then you can thin them. That's better than having gaps.

06:41And the thinning will happen probably in about a month from sowing, or maybe longer actually,

06:49depending how warm it's been. Here has been cool. So this is five weeks and now I would say we're

06:53not

06:53really ready for thinning, but you could actually, you know, you could pull out and there's a little

06:58parsnip seedling I just pulled out, for example. But I prefer to let them get a little bit bigger,

07:03just so that I'm sure what's there. So that's now sown. This, by the way, is not really a,

07:10it's kind of fake sowing because I've already got my parsnips there, but I'm doing it just to

07:15demonstrate to you how I, the method I use and recommend. So we've now got the seeds on my soil.

07:22We've got dry soil compost on top. And actually this is what I like to do. I know this contradicts

07:28most

07:29gardening advice. I do it for carrots as well. People always say you shouldn't walk on your bed,

07:34you know, and carrots, so it won't go down, blah, blah, blah. But doing this is not compacting the soil,

07:39it's just firming it and it's, it'll serve to hold the moisture around the seeds. And I'm not watering

07:45anymore now. It actually works better to have the seeds in contact with moisture germinating, going

07:50down. The dry above makes for a capillary break and there's water that deeper down it, it can't then

07:58move upwards and evaporate. It stays down there. So think of that dry surface as actually beneficial.

08:05And then weeds. This can be the big one, particularly for anyone who disturbs or digs the soil. And

08:13here I have it. And you can see the result. I've not weeded this bed since sowing it. And this

08:19is all

08:19that's come up. A thistle. Another thistle I saw. I can't see it now. I need a little one. And

08:27then,

08:30yeah, there's just the odd weed. It's very nice. So that's, that's a hand weeding job if you haven't

08:34got many. If you had a lot, a nice thing about the rows across the bed, you can simply pull

08:41your hoe

08:42once they're big enough, which is about now, after a few weeks.

08:47And this way, on a dry day like today, when the weeds are small, that just disturbs their roots

08:52enough that they frazzle before they can regrow. No point doing it on a wet day. Always on a dry

08:57day.

08:58It's a nice hoe. It's very thin blade. It's called a swivel or oscillating hoe. And I'm going to use

09:03it

09:03actually as well. Here, because there are a lot of weeds coming up. And they're black currants. They're black

09:13currants we didn't pick last year, now germinating. And they're small. This is the stage at which a hoe.

09:22There's a whole load here, actually. Let me quickly get them. The stage at which a hoe can make,

09:28save you a lot of time. It's just disturbing those seedlings enough that they die.

09:34So, that is it. I'm going to recover now. Notice the fleece is actually sitting right

09:41on the bed. That is absolutely fine. The seedlings push it up as they grow. I won't do it all,

09:48but I'll just give you the idea. And it's just got a few stones on each side to hold it

09:51down.

09:53And then we'll come back here in a few weeks time, early summer, see what's going on, see how they've

09:59grown. I might have even thinned by then. And it'll give you an idea of the pattern of growth.

10:32So, let's go.

10:43It's now the 21st of November, and we've been harvesting parsnips from here since early October.

10:53They have grown very well. It's been a wet summer, which is always good for parsnips. Having said

11:01that, the wetness has encouraged some canker disease on the shoulders of quite a few of

11:09these parsnips. That's partly why I've got a compost bucket here. I'll be trimming some off, I think.

11:14I'm going to harvest a few so you can see, just to give you an idea of how they've grown,

11:18and some of the lessons I've learned this year. There's always, with vegetable gardening,

11:23you're always learning more. With the increase of temperature that we are having, there is a bit

11:29of weather change. It's making things grow faster and for longer, and you can see, for example,

11:36at the moment, the 21st November, that much leaf growth is pretty unusual at this time of year,

11:41and normally the leaves in the winter die back, and rather like you see there, different varieties,

11:47and then you sometimes struggle to find your parsnips, but they're still there, and that's

11:51totally fine. So it's fine that the leaves die back in the winter. That's normal. I think these will

11:55die back this week because we are just turning colder now, and there's going to be some frosts,

12:01and that will improve the flavor of the parsnips, and it will mean the leaves die off.

12:06So, here we have some white gem. Now, I did say, earlier on in the video, I was going to

12:13try this

12:14thing where you push down and see if you can get them out. Crikey, there's one there as well.

12:20Ah, this is never going to work. This soil actually is pretty dense. Well, it's no dig. You can see

12:27it's springy

12:28and soft on top, but there's no way I can pull those parsnips out. So, here we are. This is

12:35ironic,

12:35isn't it? And no dig parsnips, and I'm needing to dig them out. You know, if you have a raised

12:42bed,

12:44a sort of classic raised bed with wooden sides, it could be that you can dig your parsnips, or,

12:52sorry, pull them out, and it can also depend on the variety. And this variety's white gem,

12:59yeah, they're showing some sign of movement. That's encouraging. I don't like doing this,

13:04all this disturbance. It's the only vegetable, what I'm hoping to hear is a little scrunch,

13:13as the taproot separates, and you can see they're just gently levering upwards.

13:22Yeah, that's coming out. There we go. Wow. Okay, that's pretty nice. I mean, isn't that a lovely

13:29demonstration of how we have the no-dig soil, and as you go down, you kind of get a soil

13:35profile,

13:36actually. And what I was saying earlier in the video about, you know, no dig, you don't get

13:42fork roots very much. They mostly go down pretty straight. Again, that lovely little scrunch.

13:52And again, ah, just to prove me wrong, it is forking a bit. Now that's interesting, but not

14:00actually where it matters, right at the bottom. And there's something about this part of the garden's

14:05quite interesting, that this was a nursery in the 1970s, and I think it's made up ground, and

14:10I see more sort of clay down here than in the rest of the garden. So you, yeah, really are

14:17getting

14:18good soil profile. You can see the no-digging compost we put on the top. It's made the top dark,

14:24and it's improving the soil all the way down. You can see that clay-like, or sticky soil, not

14:29true clay, but it's quite sticky and heavy, is also crumbly. Ah, this smells gorgeous as well.

14:36The smell of parsnets, for me, is one of the smells of winter. Really, really great.

14:44And that sort of thing is what I'll take off before washing. You can either cut off the tops, or

14:52I'm going to put that there, um, twist them off like that. Then I rub off the excess soil,

14:59take off a few, any of these little side roots, and I'm going to give it a wash on the

15:04video,

15:04because I want to show you, uh, when you wash them, you, you can see the amazing, uh, clarity of

15:12the skin.

15:13And actually, I'm really pleased. These do not have canker, thank goodness. There's one more here I'll remove.

15:20And this one, I did manage to cut a bit, so that's why it's not come out quite so long.

15:25That's plenty,

15:26plenty long enough. Yeah, I could just shave that. You know, that, that's still perfectly. That's a nice

15:31parsnip and a good size. There's a lot of food here. They are productive, and that's one reason I like

15:38growing them. I mean, in the course of this year, we've done so little, spent so little time here to

15:45grow

15:45these parsnips. Like, um, you saw how few weeds were growing earlier on, and which ones should I get?

15:56Maybe these ones. Um, that's, that's all. We've never watered them. Uh, the fleece came off at the end

16:02of May or third week of May, and that's it. But, oh yeah, I did pull this one out earlier

16:11to show you.

16:13This is the canker that I mentioned, and this is not good. Yeah, look at that.

16:20So, you know, I'm not claiming that every single parsnip is perfect,

16:24but what I really wanted to show you in that is this canker, which is horrible brown rotting around

16:29the shoulder. And I don't know, maybe that was just a genetically weak seed that gave that result,

16:36but that, that's compost, sadly. So, that was gladiator, actually, which is surprising. Uh, this is gladiator.

16:44This looks a better one. So, from the same seed packet,

16:52sometimes, no, that one's not going to come. You, you could at that, you know, I could get this one

16:58out.

16:58Wow, this one's got a side root. Um, just with one slice of the spade in, I'm just going a

17:05bit more

17:05from either side to see if I could get more depth of parsnip. You can see a bit how, you

17:13know,

17:14I'm not too sure what I'm going to find each time. However experienced you are growing these,

17:18they always surprise you, because it depends on the seed, the seed quality, how well the

17:24seed varieties have been maintained by the seed company.

17:30I think this one is both enormous and really long.

17:38It's a question of how much I'm, oh yeah, there you go. I've cut it. Oh yeah, look at that.

17:46It's a bit

17:46of a shame, actually. I think this one probably would have gone down a very long way.

17:52And I don't really want to upheathe my soil that much.

17:57In terms of weight, there's probably 80% of it there, I should think. But we've lost a bit at

18:04the bottom.

18:05So that's gladiator. And it's not to prove one thing or another really, just that they can grow very big.

18:13But generally, gladiator, I find, grows fewer. I don't know what that cider is.

18:21It grows fewer, or suffers less canker.

18:30Yeah, actually, that's not brilliant.

18:34The first one was good, and we've gone a bit downhill from there.

18:41So.

18:46You can see there is no

18:51no certainty when you dig a parsnip. However, although this one would be unsolable, we've been

19:00selling quite a few. I do five boxes a week of vegetables, and people like these in the box.

19:08But I wouldn't sell one like that.

19:11We will eat that one at home.

19:13Okay, now let's just do a bit of brushing.

19:22So this variety, called White Gem, has been selected by Bingenheim seeds, and

19:33they, I would say they've done a pretty good job there.

19:37A bit knobbly.

19:39But you can see that lovely white colour.

19:44This was the really long one.

19:46Ah, now, this is the other thing that can happen, is carrot root fly.

19:53That's carrot root fly damage, which is not as severe on parsnips as it can be on carrots,

20:01mainly because they're much fatter, and it's eating quite a bit of the surface.

20:06But because there's so much middle, that parsnip is not, there's still plenty of parsnip to eat.

20:15But from what I've read, the sowing in June could lessen both carrot root fly and,

20:20more importantly, the canker.

20:22The harvest would be smaller, but then if you get a monster parsnip like that,

20:27it's not really a huge advantage, because I've lost quite a bit.

20:32You can see the sticky song here.

20:35And I've lost quite a bit that I couldn't get out, so

20:40I am thinking now, a combination of warmer weather and

20:46being practical about it, to

20:49sow later.

20:51It looks to me like a good sowing date would be the first week of June.

20:55And if you do that, probably

20:59we'll need to water just to be sure, obviously depending on the weather.

21:05But it's probably, there's an equivalent weight of parsnip between

21:09that one and almost those three.

21:11And I'll just do one of these to add to the selection, to give you an idea.

21:17This

21:20is a bit odd actually, I don't know why

21:23that one has done that.

21:26But there we are.

21:27So I hope you've enjoyed seeing the selection of the harvest after

21:32seeing also how I grew them. And they're not difficult, do have a go.

21:36And you can find out more in the how to grow parsnip lesson in my seed to harvest online course,

21:41which you can find on my website.

21:44We'll see you next time.

21:45Bye.

21:49Bye.

21:53Bye.

21:56Bye.

21:59Bye.

How to Grow No Dig Parsnips - Quick Bed Prep

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