Parsnip

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Parsnip (lat. Pastinaca) - vegetable culture; biennial or perennial plant of the Umbrella family. Under natural conditions, parsnip grows in thickets of bushes, in mountain and valley meadows in Turkey, Europe, the Caucasus, in the European part of Russia and Western Siberia. Nowadays it is cultivated everywhere. Other names are pustarnak, popovnik, field borscht, trunk, tragus, white root. Parsnips are widely used in cooking, used with winter soups and various salads.

Characteristics of culture

Parsnip is a herbaceous plant with a fleshy root. Stem erect, sharp-ribbed or grooved-faceted, rough, pubescent over the entire surface, strongly branched in the upper part, reaches a height of 30-200 cm. Leaves are odd-pinnate, consist of 2-7 lobed or large-serrate, ovate, sessile, pubescent leaflets. The lower leaves are located on short petioles, the upper ones are sessile with a vaginal base.

The flowers are small, regular in shape, five-membered, collected from umbellate inflorescences, consisting of 5-15 rays. The wrapper is missing. The cup is unexpressed. Corolla is bright yellow. The fruit is a flat-squeezed crochet with a round-elliptical shape and yellowish-brownish color. The root vegetable is white, has a pleasant smell and sweet taste, and can be of a wide variety of colors (from round to conical). Flowering takes place in July - August. The fruits ripen in September.

Growing conditions

Parsnip is a cold-resistant crop, the seeds germinate at a temperature of 2-3C. Seedlings can withstand frosts down to -5C, and adult plants up to -8C. The optimum temperature for normal growth and development of the culture is 15-20C. Parsnip is a plant that is demanding on sunlight, and has a negative attitude towards shading. The thickening of the plantings is negatively reflected in the growth of the culture, especially in the initial phase.

Parsnips are relatively drought-resistant, but require abundant watering during seed germination and emergence. A sharp change in weather conditions has a bad effect on the quality of the future harvest. Soils for growing parsnips are preferable loose, light, loamy or sandy loam with a high humus content and a neutral pH. It is not recommended to grow the crop on clay, heavy loamy, structureless and acidic soils. The ideal precursors for parsnips are cucumbers, onions, potatoes and cabbage.

Soil preparation and sowing

The parsnip plot is prepared in the fall. The soil is dug up, rotted manure or humus is introduced. A week before planting, the ridges are thoroughly loosened with a rake, fed with superphosphate, potassium sulfate, sodium nitrate and wood ash.

Before sowing, the seeds are soaked in an ash solution (20 g of ash per liter of water) for 48 hours, after which they are washed and dried. The seeding depth is 3-4 cm. The distance between the rows should be 20-22 cm. To accelerate the emergence of seedlings, the ridge with crops is covered with plastic wrap.

Care

With the appearance of 2 true leaves at the shoots, the parsnips are thinned out. The distance between plants should be about 5-6 cm. The main care of the crop is frequent loosening, weeding and rare watering. It should be remembered: water should not stagnate in the soil, this will adversely affect the quality of root crops. After thinning, the plants are fed with urea, and after 20-25 days - with Azophos.

Parsnips also need preventive treatments and pest and disease control. Quite often, the plant infects septoria. The disease manifests itself in the form of brown or gray spots on the leaves, as a result of which they dry out and the umbrellas become weak. To combat septoria, plants are sprayed with a 0.1% solution of foundation. The most dangerous for parsnips, or rather for its root crops, is the root aphid. The main symptoms are leaf curling and the general appearance of the plants. For pest control, loosening with the addition of ground pepper to the soil or treatment with heptenophos is effective.

Harvesting and storage

Parsnips are harvested in September - October. It is recommended to use species for digging. After digging, the leaves are cut off, and the roots are cleaned from the ground, dried and placed in boxes filled with sand. Store parsnips at 1-3C. In the refrigerator, parsnips are stored for no more than a month, then they lose their original shape. Several specimens are left directly in the soil under the shelter, and in the spring they are dug up and eaten.