Tips for Growing Parsnips in Containers

12.06.2023 - 00:57 / gardenerspath.com / Laura Ojeda Melchor

If you’ve never grown root vegetables in containers, now’s the time to try.

Parsnips are in the Apiaceae family, just like carrots and parsley – and they’re often overlooked in favor of their bright-orange cousin. But they shouldn’t be.

As with carrots, we eat the taproot of the parsnip plant, Pastinaca sativa. Parsnips have an earthy, sweet flavor that pretty much tastes like the encapsulation of autumn, if you ask me.

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Our guide to growing parsnips covers all the details of how to cultivate this root vegetable in your garden.

In this guide, we’ll talk about all things container growing when it comes to this biennial, which is usually raised as an annual.

Want to save space in your yard and grow this delicious veggie? Let’s get started.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

Parsnips are suited to growing in USDA Hardiness Zones 2 through 9. They prefer a soil pH between 6.0 and 7.0, and like loose, loamy soil.

When grown as an annual, a single parsnip plant only spreads up to eight inches and grows 10 to 15 inches tall. The taproot can be 12 to 15 inches long and around one to four inches in diameter, or sometimes larger, but smaller ones tend to taste sweeter.

Most plants develop tasty, dinner-ready taproots in 95 to 120 days. These veggies are highly nutritious, too – check out our guide to all the health benefits of parsnips for more information!

This root vegetable has been around since antiquity and probably originated somewhere in Europe or Asia. The wild, uncultivated species grows freely along roadsides in Great Britain, Europe, North America, and Asia.

Both wild and