The tale of the enormous parsnip

Parsnips are pretty ugly, curmudgeonly beasts. But one of the things I love about them is their sheer size. Perhaps it is because I’m expecting something the size of a maincrop carrot to come up when I start forking about in the soil in the middle of winter, or perhaps it is a chance to marvel that something I have grown has got quite so enormous. But whatever it is, digging up a big fat parsnip is a very satisfying experience.

So satisfying in fact, that when I started on the parsnip patch, I was so excited by the sheer size of those roots that I kept pulling more and more up. I didn’t actually need that many: in fact, I’ve had to store them indoors when they would have been perfectly happy in the ground for much longer. But they were so big, and I was so excited that I just kept going.

Coming inside with an enormous storage box of frost-sweetened roots wasn’t such a hardship. I just roasted a whole bunch of them with honey and made curried parsnip and apple soup, which I have been happily snaffling at work for the past few weeks. Parsnips might be ugly, but they are big, and very good.

For growing advice on parsnips and other vegetables, visit our Grow page.