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Parsnips in France
Enkay
Posts: 17
in Fruit & veg
This is my first time of growing veg in northern France. I assumed everything would be just a tad earlier than the uk. However, i have read a French lunar planting guide that suggests parsnips should be planted in December. Any thoughts please?
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Theye are not common Panseyface, that's why I want to grow them. They are in large supermarkets but quite expensive. They are known as Le Panais. But, when to plant them?
I can now get decent parsnips here, both normal and organic at decent prices. The one year I grew them they were immense and woody in the middle before we got anything like cold enough to have the frosts supposedly needed to improve the taste so I haven't bothered since. I don't know if it was the soil, the climate that year or the wrong kind of parsnip.
Here is what the RHS advises - https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/vegetables/parsnips
And if you do not get the frost to sweeten them up, then dig them, cut them up into roasting size pieces , blanch lightly and freeze them. This has the same effect on their sweetness as a good frost.
My Belgian lady-friend also discovered parsnips when she came here and couldn't find them at home, except rarely and expensively. Now, however, they're also available in Flanders at sensible prices.
She's tried growing them but they were pathetic (though delicious), due chiefly, I suspect to awful soil.
I've found growing conditions in Belgium (and northern France will be similar) to be the same as here, so sow them in the spring as soon as the soil is warm enough to let them get going.
Excellent tip Berghill. Thanks. We're planning to move when OH retires and may end up on a parsnip free zone.
Steve - Belgian soils vary widely and so do rain levels. From what I've seen driving around, Flemish field crops tend to be leeks, carrots, beans, corn, beetroot. They do hydroponc salads and toms and pepers in greenhouses and polytunnels.
Round here it's all cereals and sweet corn in rotation with potatoes, sugar beet and chicons with mustard for a green manure. Oil seed rape is becoming more prevalent and we still get flax in some fields but not as much as before.
Between here and north east Flanders there are acres and acres of espaliered apples and pears in what is known as the Hesbaye. Further south around Wépion they are famous for their strawberries.
I live in Dordogne. I sow parsnip seeds in April and thin them out when they come up. They need extra water in dry summers. I harvest after the first frost as and when needed until about February/March. Sometimes they are funny shapes as the soil is a bit stony.
Parsnips are unknown here in Italy. Strange, because in Roman times they were immensely popular. For some reason, they disappeared from the diet. There's a word for parsnip in Italian - pastinaca - but none of the locals have heard of it. I showed a neighbour the photo on a seed packet. She had never seen or heard of it. I gather they are grown in the north, around Parma, to feed to the pigs. I have to import seeds from the UK.
I plant in April-May, keep well watered during the hot summers, and don't start to harvest before December, by which time the frosts have added some lovely sweetness.
It's truly strange. They were one of the most widely-grown veg here in Roman times and the Romans took parsnips with them when they spread North. They were used in much the same way potatoes are these days. Maybe the appearance of the potato had something to do with their demise.
They have only recently started coming back in France. A French friend told me they were a staple food during the war and everyone was sick of them so they went out of fashion. The first ones I saw in our local supermarket about 5 years ago had a big label on them to say they were from England!
I did read somewhere that, back in the day, they were as popular in France as here. But then mysteriously disappeared from the diet.