Medwyn Williams stops his parsnips from rotting
This nifty little trick prevents water dripping on seedlings in my glasshouse
My parsnips are doing well and as soon as I sowed them I placed panes of glass over the drums. These were there initially to help with early germination, which happened within 10 days. After germination I still use the panes of glass, but rest them on bricks. The reason I do this is because the first year I sowed parsnips in this glasshouse I lost a couple of stations as drips from the roof fell constantly on top of them and they rotted away.
I actually have three types of parsnips growing this year to see which one does the best under my conditions. I know ‘Victor’ does well, so the other two are ‘Panorama’ and Tozer Seed’s new variety, which is still a number at the moment. Both of the latter apparently retain their whiteness longer on the bench – only time will tell!
I finally managed to get a builderbuilde in to open up and concrete the foundations for the polytunnel I’m moving from home down to my plot. This particular polytunnel has vertical sides of 1.2m (4ft) before curving over, which will allow me to grow blanch leeks right up to the edge without impairing growth. However, the plan this year is to grow my large exhibition onions in this polytunnel in three beds and I should be able to get around 40 into it. The beds are three blocks high with 45cm (18in) paths in between and will take a fair bit of soil to fill them.
Fortunately, I’ve plenty of well-rotted horse manure and I’ve wheelbarrowed a fair bit of this on to the polytunnel site to rotovate it into the beautiful soil below. I’ll then barrow this into the beds and top off with bags of Levington M3 compost, and rotavate well.