THE ROOT MASTER

Monty Don is particularly proud of his parsnips this year, and his carrots have done well too. Here he shares the secret...

My parsnips have grown superbly this year. They’re textbook, beautiful, supremely happy parsnips – and I’m taking all the credit. Well, up to a point. There is a context for this vainglorious, Trump-esque stance. The honest truth is that I did sow the seeds and I’ve occasionally run a hoe between the rows to remove weeds, but that is about as big a contribution as I could stand before my maker and claim.

Even without my ministrations, it would have been a very good year for parsnips. And it’s no coincidence that my carrots have done very well too. The two crops are growing side by side and are very closely related.

I have history with parsnips. Although they are such an honest-to-God root vegetable, as earthy as anything might be, they can be fickle. Some years they’re very slow to germinate, and other years they don’t germinate at all.

In principle they grow best in very freedraining, sandy soil, without any recent manure or compost added to it to stop them forking (when the roots branch out). However, my parsnips, along with the carrots, are growing in a bed that had masses of compost added last year to what is fundamentally heavy clay loam. I did not water them once throughout the whole of the long, hot summer. I am not advocating that this is the best way to grow them, just that it worked, this time, for me.

But that is at the heart of gardening wisdom. When you start out you’re looking for the right answer to everything and trying to remember it all, from unpronounceable Latin names to the right time to prune a rambling rose. Then, if things have gone well, you reach the next stage when you’ve learned a lot, are good at all the names and are doing very well. You feel you’ve cracked it. And if you’re unlucky that’s where your gardening development ends.

Unlucky? Yes, because you do not start to get really good at gardening until you realise that most of what you have learned does not always apply. It is when the things that you grow best start to fail on you that you really, really start to learn. That is because the secret of gardening is not knowing the right answers but in asking the right questions. Every garden is different. Every year is different. Many seemingly identical plants are different and certainly different parts of quite a small plot can be very different. There are very few right answers.

But if the thought of learning all the time, of being perpetually interested, perpetually observant and trusting your responses excites you, then you will not only be a good gardener but a supremely satisfied one too.

Which brings me back to parsnips. The practical growing advice is very straightforward. Sow the flat seeds as soon as the soil starts to warm up. Always use fresh seeds, as they do not store well. I usually sow radish among them because they can be pulled and eaten before they start to compete with the much slower-growing parsnips. Then the seedlings should be thinned so they’re about 8cm apart. Let them grow all summer and leave them in the ground over winter. Don’t harvest until there’s been a frost, as this intensifies their sweetness. Eat roasted, puréed with masses of butter, cream and pepper (my favourite) or as soup.

Do this every year. Despite doing it the same and doing your part with skill and dedication, it will sometimes go wrong and it will sometimes go right – but that is gardening.

Monty with his parsnips