Root parsley ‘Atika’
Above ground it's parsley...
If there was ever a vegetable which couldn’t make up its mind, this is it.
It might be a parsley: and then again, maybe it’s a parsnip. On a good day, it could be a carrot.
The identity crisis even affects its common name: take your pick from root parsley, rock selinen, Hamburg parsley, Dutch parsley (good grief, it can’t even decide which country it comes from. Actually, it turns out to be Czechoslovakia) parsley root or just ‘that bloody thing that doesn’t know what it is’.
But all this general confusion plays beautifully into the hands of us veg gardeners. Because a veg that’s trying its hand at being several different things can be everything at once – and you get the best of all worlds.
Root parsley is definitely parsley (it’s Petroselinum crispum, but with a var tuberosum on the end betraying those swollen parsnip-like roots). But it’s a parsley that – like a parsnip – stays in the ground through most of the winter.
The luxury of having plenty of parsley to go and snip from the garden even in December and January can’t be overstated. I always have a bit of trouble keeping conventional parsley happy indoors: I think it’s too warm for it, so it grows more leggy than leafy, and besides I have a habit of forgetting to water it.
But this winter I’ve been able to pop into the veg garden and snip myself a few sprigs from each plant whenever I feel like it (don’t fleece them or they won’t have enough left to keep themselves going).
It’s a little coarser than your Italian flat-leaved summer parsley, with a slightly stronger flavour, but as long as you use a little less than you would normally it makes a very respectable substitute.
Then when you feel like it, you simply dig up the roots and use them just like you would parsnips, or carrots, or turnips for that matter.
...and below ground, it's a parsnip (and I'm about as successful in growing it straight)
They are much more delicate, whiter and smaller than parsnips – about 15cm long, and nowhere near as fat – but to my mind that’s a distinct advantage. I find a lot of my parsnips are hard, inedible core which needs removing before you can enjoy the root at its best: no such problem with root parsley.
The flavour is where this vegetable stops being like a parsnip and starts being more like a carrot. It’s sweet, tender, without any of the earthiness of a parsnip - rather like a carrot that’s been cooked with parsley for flavouring. It’s intriguingly, deliciously different.
I sowed mine in modules in spring, then potted them on a bit before planting them outside. I would imagine it wouldn’t be too troublesome to sow direct outdoors if you prefer. It doesn’t seem to have inherited the problems with germination for which parsley (and parsnips) are notorious, either.
After that it grows like a parsnip: in other words, it needs a good long spell in the ground to form those lovely little white roots.
Unlike parsnips (though like parsley) it’s happy to grow in the shade and are almost ridiculously trouble-free: mine spent most of their summer overshadowed by the rampant seeding radishes next door which I hadn’t realised would grow so big (I like their peppery, crunchy green seedpods). The root parsley didn’t mind a bit - they were just as good when I uncovered them as if they’d had the place to themselves.
If you’re strapped for space, and wondering whether you have room for parsley and parsnips and carrots this year, this may just be the answer. And even if you have all the room in the world, it’s worth growing for that intriguingly unusual flavour and easy-going nature. All in all, for a schizophrenic vegetable, it’s pretty nice to have around.
