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Ok I know the're not, but I do love parsnips. I've spent all day today preparing a bed for carrots, digging out, sifting and raking to remove all of the stones and mixing in bags of sharp sand and good quality top soil.
I also gave it a couple of handfuls of blood n bone and then firmed it all down by walking on a scaffold board.
I'm absolutely knackered!

My question is this can I plant parsnips in this bed as well? Do you just treat them the same as carrots? And if so do they take about the same time to harvest. I was thinking about planting one row of carrots and one row of parsnips.

Any other newby parsnip advice would be most welcome!

Best of luck with your parsnips - I have mixed results but carrots are a doddle.

Parsnips are often much slower to germinate than carrots.

Some carrot varieties will over winter in the ground and be useable through to Feb or a bit beyond but it depends on where you are, the weather and the variety. Autumn King carrots can be pulled as "baby carrots" and the thinnings are good. Left in the ground ours are useable through to the end of Feb.

I think parsnips are sweeter and benefit from a frost so will keep well into the flowing spring. They are, of course, useable well before then too.

So differences are (as far as I know) - speed of germination and, possibly, how long they keep in the ground.

Hope that's a bit of help.

..no..they are not just 'white carrots'. Once you get parsnips growing..they are much more robust plants..they grow taller..need more space between plants and are capable growing into huge monsters very easily.
To me carrot, though very similar in culinary way, is more 'refine' in its habbits and parsnip a 'thug'.. ;D
Growing them together.. :-\..possible..but keeping one part of bed for one and other 'end' for another crop...how long you keep them in your ground depends of the size you want to harvest them.

there is no reason  not to grow them in alternate rows so long as you crop the carrots as soon as their large enough to eat,that   way you ll to leave enough room for your parsnips to develop to full grown roots and get a double crop from one space i did this last year , worked for me

No they're more like devils fingers or is that courgettes? Either way "not on my plate Thanks :):):)

i love all vegetables but broad beans uck lol

Parsnips get the basic treatment from me. Dig, rake, sow in February. I've just thinned them to 3 inches apart. Later thinnings will be eaten til the remaining plants are 9 inches apart. The only crucial thing is good fresh seed. I save my own so can sow it nice and thick. They get no feed other than whats left in the soil from the previous crop. Still eating them now. I think I read somewhere that they were eaten much more here in the UK before the arrival of potatoes.

I had an abysmal germination rate on my parsnips last year ...3 plants in a whole row!!!

I'm having a go a pre-chitting the seed at the moment ( I read about it on here )

Yes in answer to your question ... same treatment as for carrots, in terms of bed preparation.

A few other notes ... parsnip seed does not keep so buy fresh each year ... sow thinly ... a trick adopted by some given the slow germination is to intersperse the parsnip seed along the row with some radish seed. Radish germinates quickly and will show you precisely where the row is, making weeding easier (cos the weeds will be up and away before the parsnips) ... and you can eat the radish of course!

I find parsnips are much easier, trouble-free, pest resistant, and productive than carrots. Previous comments about fresh seed is the most crucial point. Don't waste time sowing seed that is more than 12 months old. I'm another one that saves my own seed, because it's easy, and it's the only way to ensure freshness.
No need for digging or complicated soil preparation. I just hoe off old weeds then sow direct. Also, ignore what it says on the seed packet about sowing in February. Wait till the soil is warm for trouble-free germination.

They don't get attacked by carrot fly, either.  Or anything else in my area, they really are one of the easiest crops so long as you use fresh seed. Sounds like you should get some wonderful crops with the 5 star treatment you're proposing.
Just one word of warning (based on sad experience...) if you want parsnips with your Christmas roast, watch the frost forecast - 2 years ago mine were rock solid in the ground and I had to use frozen.  (They freeze fine, too, I've just used some for a delicious soup.) Parsnips, the wonder veg!

Quote from: Ian Pearson on April 29, 2012, 11:59:09
I find parsnips are much easier, trouble-free, pest resistant, and productive than carrots. Previous comments about fresh seed is the most crucial point. Don't waste time sowing seed that is more than 12 months old. I'm another one that saves my own seed, because it's easy, and it's the only way to ensure freshness.
No need for digging or complicated soil preparation. I just hoe off old weeds then sow direct. Also, ignore what it says on the seed packet about sowing in February. *Wait till the soil is warm for trouble-free germination.*

*I think this is a very important point.

And don't be put off by thoughts of problems with carrots... I rotovate the soil and sow in a very neat line so the small weeds can be hoed away as soon as they appear.

I've always had row upon row of them without difficulty. I sow quite early and then sow a couple more rows a few weeks later to give a continuous crop of small thinnings as well as plenty for the rest of the year.

As someone else has said parsnip germination is the problem / hurdle. Once they are up you're laughing but they do need lots more space than their red skin neighbours.

Carrot fly... yep. We have this in our area but it's not usually too much of a problem and the larger carrots are only nibbled - nothing a good potato peeler can't remove.

Thin carrots late evening or early morning when the carrot fly are snoozing to stop them sniffing out your crop. I often plant onions next to mine... it may help disguise the carroty smell.

Just musing on the question of when to sow. As I said, I sow February and never have a problem. For lots of things I would agree about waiting til the soil warms, but I always get a lot of parsnip seedlings around where I collected seed the year before from spilt seed. These have sat happily in the soil right through winter. I have heard that parsnip seed needs a blast of cold and know that some people leave their seed in the fridge for a few days to break dormancy. Anybody else heard of such a thing?

I treat parsnips as for carrots... sow them in modules with a toilet roll shoved in them... get good enough germination that if I put two seeds in a tube I normally get at least one seedling.... I really only need a couple of dozen parsnips a year, that'll do me for roasted  parsnip twice a week for four months usually.... plant out once the second true leaf turns up and they're robust enough to take anythng else that gets thrown at them.... normally start mine off in the gap between the peppers and chillis coming out of the propagators at the end of March and the assorted cucurbits and beans going in now.... they'll get planted out next week I'd have thought

Thanks for all the advice. I can't wait to sow these seeds now. I like the idea of one row of carrots and one row of parsnips, so that when the carrots are harvested the parsnips have got space to grow. Sounds like a good use of space.

One other question though - I've just raked in a couple of handfuls of super phosphate for better root growth.

How long do I have to leave it before I sow the seeds in this bed.

This topic title made me smile because my Japanese teacher said a week ago that she thought parsnips were white carrots when she first came across them in England. It may be that they are not so well known abroad. A German friend said they were considered 'exotic' in Germany.
I shan't grow them on my new allotment this year because I want to clear up weeds from beds and parsnips are in the ground too long. Next year I may grow them even though they are cheap in the shops.

I sowed  a bed full of carrotts and parsnips, I didn't bother pre chitting this year or using the loo rolls, there was only a few days difference with the germianetion, maybe a week which quite surprised me.

Parsnips here are in the shops in very smalll amounts but are very expensive as are brussel sprouts, think in terms of three times the price of apples, it really annoys me.

I have two types of white carrot by the way, one is used primarily for soups.

XX Jeannine