Perishing parsnips

There is something particularly satisfying about growing parsnips. For one thing it is a bit of a challenge on the West Coast where the parsnip's requirements for a long growing season and slow germination means there is a protracted window of opportunity for the slug hoards to graze down the parsnip seedlings as they slowly germinate. A not uncommon change in late spring weather to a week or two of cold and wet can also cause the seeds to rot.

So not easy but if you give up on the idea of long tapering roots then a good stumpy crop can be achieved by starting them off in root trainers or loo roll tubes. You might not be able to enter the parsnip class at your local veg. show but you will be able to put parsnips on the table at Christmas.

At least that the goal. The last two years were fine on the growing front but harvesting at Christmas was the problem. A succession of -10c night time temperatures turned the ground solid and necessitated maximum effort with a a five foot pinch bar to prize out the prized roots. This year all was looking good and we started on our crop before the required cold weather that allegedly brings out their flavour. Apart from one cold week 2011 is ending wet and very windy so harvesting was easy. But just look at the picture.

    

One of our Christmas parsnips

In the few weeks before Christmas the last of my crop was all but destroyed, eaten by, I would guess, mice or voles or maybe the combined efforts of mice and voles. But these were not any old small mammals these were quite discerning choosing, as you can see, to eat the inside flesh and leave the skin. Fortunately they spared us just enough for Christmas and so far have not been nibbling the celeriac.

In case you are interested, the little shrub with the colourful foliage is a native of New Zealand  and goes by the name of Pseudowintera colorata. It is a little gem and should slowly grow into a decent size shrub.  Back in its native New Zealand it likes cool wet and windy places and is happy under snow. Also known as horopito and pepper tree, its leaves and bark are claimed to have medicinal properties. The specimen we have was kindly brought all the way from New Zealand by our son who lives there and is a selected variant called 'Red Leopard'. Thank you Tom.   

Knowing your Onions

We love onions, onion soup, caramelised onion quiche, onions are the start of so many dishes, soups and chutneys and so it follows that I try and grow lots of onions. Generally I grow them form sets planting 50 or so in the poly tunnel in March/April to get an early crop and the rest outside though most years I sow a few Bedfordshire Champions partly because it seems growing from seed is somehow more satisfying and partly because of the name - who can resist the thought of growing some Bedfordshire Champions?

Last year was a bit of a challenge. A bright start in April was followed by a wet and cold May and a poor June. Despite the challenge I was really pleased with the crop and this was largely down to a technique I have developed to cope with the vagaries of West Coast weather.

Stumbled across in desperation might have been a more honest description since a long cold winter and cold wet weather left ground temperature too cold to plant out onion sets in May and some of the sets were starting to sprout. The early sown sets  in a bed in the poly tunnel were doing very well so I decided to start all the rest off in the polly tunnel big in polystyrene fish boxes. The size used for salmon will take getting on for a hundred sets when squeezed in.

They thrived in these boxes and come June I was planting out very well rooted young onions about 200mm (8 inches) tall.  I had hardened them off for a few days, bringing the boxes inside at night, and, once planted, they barely paused for breath before steadily growing.

This year was the same, I had some sets outside in the ground in late April but then the weather conspired against me so I stopped panicking and planted the rest in boxes. When eventually planted out they did just as well as those planted outside 3-4 weeks earlier.

The other problem with onions is that we do not always get glorious long hot sunny days in August and September. In theory such weather ripens the crop and when the bulbs are eased slightly out of the ground it dries them out for safe keeping. More often I harvest the crop some time in September when we have had two consecutive dry days and then dry them by hanging in small bunches in the greenhouse or poly tunnel, don't make the bunches too big just 4-6 bulbs or they will not dry out properly.

This year was particularly grim, I did not even wait for two consecutive days and had to lay out the wet bulbs individually so that they could thoroughly dry out and then keep into the winter.  Now its winter and we are enjoying our own onions in all those different ways.