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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Parsnips
  • Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:00:33 -0400


On Apr 29, 2013, at 10:47 AM, Pam Twin Oaks wrote:

there is no particular market for early
parsnips, 

Flavor is improved by cold weather. I doubt you want to start digging them before frost, or at least weather very close to freezing; I don't think they'd be very good.


We dig ours in late November. I think it's best to get them before the
winter solstice, or they start to get woody. Perhaps you could mulch
over top of them with straw or hay to keep the ground from freezing,
as an alternative to a low tunnels. (Assuming you don't want to dig
them before really cold weather and store them in a cellar.)

Parsnips overwinter here (upstate NY, in case you didn't notice the signature) without protection; and did even back when we were zone 5A. The only reason I can see for mulching, tunneling, or digging early would be if that if you want to sell them while the ground's frozen they'd be hard to dig.

Here they can be harvested either late fall up until the ground freezes; and/or again in the spring starting as soon as the ground thaws again, though you need to get them before there's much in the way of top growth, or the flavor and texture will have gone out of them along with the nutrients into encouraging the top growth.

Maybe in Virginia yours are trying to grow all winter and that's why they get woody in midwinter?


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 6A now I think
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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