I really had to share or should that be ‘brag about’ this parsnip. I know the show growers can produce their six feet specimens under cover but this is for our table. Grown outside in a raised bed. She weighs in at 1lb 4 5/8 oz or 584 gr in new money, measuring a foot long and a foot around the shoulder’s circumference. The variety was Palace, which I’ll be growing again.
I’m rather pleased with my parsnips this year.
Although I’ve had a few tiddlers and one multi-tentacled monster that would give Professor Quatermass a run for his money – most of the bed are like this baby.
I think parsnips are very underrated. Arguably they’re better for you than potatoes with a similar calorie value. Not as versatile I admit, but there’s a lot you can do with parsnips, all the same.
Christmas Dinner
It gives me great satisfaction that we’ll be sitting down to a Christmas Dinner where all the veggies have come from our plots. You cannot get fresher than home grown for starters. Or a lower carbon footprint.
Shortages Coming?
Like a lot of people in this pandemic, we’re concerned about supplies. Although it’s turned out to be a lot better than we feared at the start. The disruptions due to Covid could have been a lot worse.
Thank Goodness this Omicron version is, so they think, milder than the Delta. It’s so infectious that we’re probably all going to be exposed to it. They reckon half the people who have it either don’t notice or just think it’s a cold.
The threat now with this Omicron is that so many are off sick / isolating that things break down. Deliveries depend on supply chains with many links and it only takes one link to break and the chain fails.
I’m sure any supply problems will be very short lived. The shops won’t be empty and we won’t be fighting over the last tin of beans. But, it’s comforting to have a full store cupboard. A bit like fire insurance. You never plan on collecting it but you have it, anyway.
Over the holidays I’ll be looking at what I’ve got in stock in the way of seeds and getting my ordering done. Now we’re past the shortest day, spring is beckoning and sowing time will soon be on us.
I have huge parsnips this year. Unfortunately I cannot post a photo but the one I dug out the other day was 45 cm long 35 cm circumference at the top and weighed in at 1.25kg
Sounds great! Well done, indeed.
Hello John, reading the above I couldn’t resist it! I can’t see any function to upload a pic of it, but I lifted a Hollow Crown parsnip that really needed an excavator to bring up. It weighed in at 2lb10oz, 16″ long. My soil is clayish & I grew them all inside kitchen roll tubes direct into the ground, seems to have worked!
Congratulations, Chris, that sounds great. This isn’t set up to enable people to upload pictures although they can be easily uploaded on the forums.