Ray S
Do you mean you sowed seven year old seed?
Gregg M
Yep. It might have been older, I should go and check the seed packet. Edit: couldn’t find the exact packet, but a sibling group was labelled 2014, and sowed a year ago, so 7 years. It confirmed for me the value of homegrown seed, picked fresh, handled properly, and stored well.
Anna M
I love the idea of fat parsnips!!!
Gregg M
Me too, Anna. It’s interesting that of the root crops we are happy to grow and eat round beetroots and turnips and radishes, but parsnips ‘have to be long’. I wanted something that needed less soil prep, and were easier to harvest. I have seen, once, short fat parsnips for sale in Australia - I should have bought some and replanted them, would have shortcut the process.
Thomas P
same story for me: last year I did select for fat parsnips, not long and nearly impossible to dig entirely, even in my sandy soil…
joseph z
How are you finding the flesh quality to the fatties? My experience with parsnips to date has shown the skinnier the more succulent and flavorful and the fatter I went the less amenable they were to non-pithy/hard fleshy fiber. I suppose you could select for this too (derp) but am overall just curious. Cool project!
Gregg M
, I must say I haven’t eaten many of them, mostly saving the fat ones for replanting, and eating the skinny rejects. I’m about to plant a large bed from last year’s seed, so hopefully I will get enough to try a decent sample of the fat ones. There is always the problem of replanting half eaten root crops - I’ve had a lot of the cut carrot roots rot after replanting in previous years.
Justin .
Sorry if this is a silly idea, I’m a total newb, but… could it possibly help to put propolis tincture on the cut parts when planting cut carrots etc.? I make my own propolis tincture, I have not used any commercial one so I suspect mine is fairly different, but anyway I use 96% alcohol and soak raw propolis in it until I have a saturated solution. If I have a cut or infected graze, i drop a drop of it on, and within a few seconds all the alcohol has evaporated, leaving the lovely and flexible propolis coating that after some more seconds isn’t even sticky. Perhaps could this be a good way of giving the cut part of your roots an antifungal antibacterial protective coating? (It seems to even be antiviral also)