Parsnip roots and snow

February 13, 2013 by Elaine 2 Comments

We have snow!  Like me you could be forgiven for thinking that, based on my post ‘No snow for Mud‘, the arrival of snow would be cause for celebration for Mud but no, this is the wrong sort of snow, it wont last and, as it is now the middle of the working week, he wont have an opportunity to go play even if his prediction is wrong and it lasts and gets deeper overnight.

To be fair, he is probably right and I can understand his frustration in respect of the timing of this snowfall but, hey, the girls are happy and the garden always looks so pretty, especially when there are no footprints to mar the crisp whiteness. Mind you, having thought about it and despite Muds’ mutterings to the contrary, it is probably a good thing that it has fallen today because I can just imagine how much more frustrated and despondent Mud would be, had he been in a position to go play because the current level simply isn’t deep enough.

On a more positive note for the vegetable gardener me, my parsnip seeds are developing roots! Only a few millimeters long and only one root per seed but I have the beginnings of six parsnip seedlings, out of the 59 seeds I ‘sowed’ onto damp kitchen towel 10 days ago. I’m really keen to see how well these seeds do because I have heard good things about this method of germinating parsnip seed, although I have never actually tried it before.

My usual method involves direct sowing the seed into my beds, usually in early April when the weather and therefore the soil, tends to be a bit warmer. Invariably, as the official germination period arrives and passes, without sight of a single parsnip seedling, I begin to worry that my seeds have failed and so I sow a load more. The inevitable result is that a couple of days after my second sowing, the seedlings from my first lot of seeds begin to show their faces and I then end up with too many seedlings too close together and I have to thin them out which I hate doing. Every year I promise I’ll wait but then my nerve fails and the image of Christmas Dinner without parsnips, plants itself firmly into my head and I can’t bypass it!

As I recorded in a much earlier post, Mud will go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that homegrown parsnips are part of the Christmas Dinner and so failure is not an option and neither are tasteless, shop bought interlopers.