Heritage and Parsnips

Well After working on my garden for a few days i feel like progress is being made and I its time to think about what to grow, oh what fun! The possibilities are very nearly endless, there a lot of veg out there, but also a lot of different varieties. One thing i want to try growing however is parsnips, I really, Really love parsnips, no other vegetable can even hope to compete with the mighty Parsnip.

They a very British plant, growing well in our colder climate (in fact the taste better after a frost) and are very under estimated. Many people are familiar with them at Christmas, but i believe no dinner is a roast without a whole dish of these sweet roots. Apparently the French only used them for cattle fodder, further proof that Franks are not the be all end all of food.

This year in my garden I'm heavily considering growing a lot of heritage fruit, not only will this be keeping alive olde English traditions, you'll also invariably get more interesting produce. So up above you'll see the first purchased seeds for my spring garden. Until next time.

Three days in..

Ah just noticed its actually four. But lets begin, (actually on a side note, my pissing space bar is playing up, you reading this have absolutely no idea how irritating this is getting.) This is the time of the year when people start making outlandish claims as to what they are going to give up, but won't. This leaves two options.

1- Give up something you don't do, i.e. I know I'll quit smoking as I don't smoke.

2- Really, really try.

Now we all know which is the easy option, but lets try shall we? And lets pick something good, I personally like the idea of choosing to do something rather than cutting something out. The obvious being to get into shape, loose weight etc....BORING. You won't do it, not even till February.
My resolution is to have a go at forging my small concrete jungle into something life sustaining. Last year I didn't grow a thing and with spring just around the corner (unless there have been some rather serious changes that I don't know about) now is a good time to start planning.

Firstly, reclaim and clean. I need to take back the land, this will be a protracted campaign involving tools and bin bags. Its a little shocking how quickly junk can accumulate. Once all the rubbish has been cleared its time to take stock of what we have to work with. Really not much indeed. I have one actual patch of earth two metres by point five and several 50cm2 containers. Not a lot.

Not in previous years I have produced staples, such as potatoes, carrots, but really considering size restraints I can't afford to grow these ready available and cheap foods, so the plan is to grow more interesting fare. One thing we will definitely grow is leeks. Leeks are really nice, and astonishingly, to me at least, expensive to grow. Squashes and sweet potatoes, things I love but my GF won't touch and chillies. So in the coming weeks regeneration will start and magic will be sown. That's the idea at least.

Also, my last post concerned a rather curious book, that's fallen by the wayside due to lots of very interesting books (something Christmas hasn't helped at all) anyway, that will be back. Eventually.