Growing tips for root veg
QI’m quite new to veg growing and struggle with carrots and parsnips. They often don’t germinate, or they are scrawny, or the carrots get root fly and the parsnips fork. Please can I have some growing tips for next season? Bethany Houghton, Doncaster, South Yorkshire
AYour aim is sweet parsnips ready to lift for the rest of winter, and maincrop carrots perhaps still in the ground (‘Eskimo’ is a very hardy variety). In colder regions, carrots are usually lifted and stored frost-free, safe from slugs and rodents. From a summer sowing, there could still be a few carrots such as ‘Early Nantes’ to harvest under unheated glass, and autumn-sown carrots sitting out winter to crop next May or June.
Carrots and parsnips love a light, stone-free, well-drained soil, so add plenty of organic matter several months prior to planting. Exposure to fresh compost or manure encourages forking.
The chances are that you have a thick, unimproved, heavy soil on which these roots are always going to struggle. During the first few years of developing my veg garden here in East Devon, our clay soil with flints produced miserable roots. Taproots couldn’t grow down or swell, hit flints and forked badly. They fare better now, after years of adding well-rotted organic matter, so perhaps consider boxing in some raised beds and filling them with better soil.
Good germination relies on fresh seed – and although it is tempting to use up last year’s supply, this risks wasting valuable time if germination is poor. Heavy soils are slow to warm up, and some years I’ve had to hold back well into April. Warming soil with cloches or ventilated polythene will help.