GardenParsnip variety
Hollow Crown Parsnip
✓ In your garden
Hollow Crown is a hollow crown parsnip, ready in about 105 days. It’s a long ivory taproot that turns sweet and nutty after frost — a patient, cool-season crop. Sow the seed directly in spring (it hates transplanting), give it loose, stone-free soil to grow straight, and leave it in the ground through the first hard freezes, which turn its starch to sugar.
“A sweet, nutty winter root — best after a hard frost.”
Growing basics — shared by every parsnip
Hollow Crown grows like any other parsnip. The full picture — how deep to plant, spacing, feeding, pests, harvest — lives on the Parsnip page so it's maintained in one place.
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Spacing (in row)
- 3–6 in
- Row spacing
- 12–24 in
- Planting depth
- 0.25–0.5 in
- Soil pH
- 6–6.5
- Water
- Moderate
What is Hollow Crown good for?
- RoastingCaramelizes sweet and nutty. Great
- Soups & mashSilky puréed. Great
- RawBetter cooked — starchy raw. Skip it
From how it grows — kitchens vary.
What Hollow Crown is known for
Urban Farmer describes this as:
- keeps a long time after picking
That is the company selling the seed, describing its own product. True, and worth weighing as such.
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Want the full 10/50/90% odds + nearest stations? Open the frost tool →When to plant Hollow Crown in your zone
Zone 6bGreenhouse or cover on: your start slides ~4 weeks earlier and your harvest stretches ~3 weeks later (shown striped).
Planting seeds straight in the ground only works where the season's long and warm — most gardeners start seeds indoors or buy young plants, or you'd pick your first tomato right as frost hits.
Comfortable — first ripe fruit lands around early Jul, well before your typical frost (~late Oct).
- Plant seeds outside
- late Mar – early Apr
- Growing
- early Apr – early Jul
- Picking
- early Jul – late Jul
Typical dates for zone 6b — set your zone or ZIP above for yours.
Growing Hollow Crown — the things that trip people up
- Parsnip seed is slow and fussy — use fresh seed each year, keep the soil surface damp for two to three weeks until it sprouts, and don’t give up early.
- Leave the roots in the ground until after a few hard frosts — cold converts their starch to sugar, and they hold in the soil right through winter under a little mulch.
Hollow Crown parsnip at a glance
| Type | Hollow Crown |
|---|---|
| Days to ripe | 105 days after you plant it outside |
Extra fields from seed-catalog listings and university growing guides. Days to ripe and disease resistance shift with your climate and seed source — double-check with your local extension office before you buy.
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Common questions about Hollow Crown
How long does Hollow Crown take to grow?
About 105 days — one of the longest-season roots, sown in spring and pulled from late fall onward.
Why leave Hollow Crown until after frost?
Cold weather converts the root’s starch to sugar, so frost-kissed parsnips are far sweeter. They keep in the ground through winter.
Browse more parsnip varieties →