Parsnips 2021

I'm happy with my parsnip germination this year - 100% success.  This is the way I did it:
1. Dug the bed deeply and remove every stone I could find.
2. Raked the surface to a very fine tilth.
3. Made drills along the bed a full 1" deep - deeper than usual.
4. Watered just these drills and allowed the water to drain away.  Repeated  this stage .
5. Sowed the seeds all along the drills, covered and firmed down.
Then - and this is what really made the difference - I checked every single day to make sure the bed never dried out. Any day the soil looked to be getting dry, I watered with a fine rose. After four weeks (!) The parsnips came up.  I thinned them to two inches apart and will thin again to leave them six or seven inches apart. This will give me over a hundred parsnips - more than I can eat. Parsnip wine will be on the menu come the Autumn!

Nice one Sean. These are the bain of my life, but I have it now sorted "I hope". Throughout the year I collect bog rolls. I put them filled with compost in a large container. I put two seeds in each and keep them warm and moist in the potting shed. As soon as germination takes place they all get planted in the prepared bed using the right size dibber. No roots are visible yet so the mature Parsnips will be straight. Lastly, I remove the weakest seedling by cutting it off with scissors. Now Carrots are another matter.

Damn carrots!!. I will make one more sowing before giving up with them. The lack of rain does not help of course. I have twelve seedings up after two sowings A local farmer sowed 5 acres that look like a forest.

I sowed all mine (5 different varieties) in big tubs. 100% germination, thinned and growing well. Like parsnips, the trick is keeping the seed watered till they germinate. In dry weather, it means watering every day.

Well, I now have twenty-one Carrots and have sown more seed in between the wide gaps of previous sowings. No doubt its the lack of rain and bright sunshine that has given me such poor results. The Parsnips look grand.