Parsnips - what went wrong?

[stella]

I had a packet of old seed which I though would never germinate but I threw the seeds into a pot of compost that I had taken some other plants out of instead of throwing it away. Got a whole pot full of seedlings so I put them into the garden, now I have a garden full of the biggest parsnips I have ever seen???

[Thelma Sanders]

I grow them in deep paper pots and find that by the time you have the the beginnings of true leaves at the top they've already reached the bottom of the pots - the roots really do grow that quickly

So now I plant as soon as they have germinated and get very few forked snips