Illegal Aliens?

A dry day so this morning Susan and I went down to the allotment to survey the plot and collect some vegetables for the coming week. As we've got more land this year we need to be making a start on clearing it and rearranging the rest of the plot to take account of the extra space.

We picked carrots (lots of fly damage), beetroot, a cabbage, leeks and these amazing parsnips. Yes, they are parsnips. A friend gave us some seedlings and we transplanted them and they grew well all summer and we thought there would be some lovely specimens in the soil. How wrong could we be. Never transplant parsnips, or any root veg for that matter, else this will be the result.

We do eat them by the way, just takes a while to prepare them.

I am reading a book by the BBC Radio 2 Allotment correspondent, Terry Walton and he grows his parsnips in sections of toilet roll and transplants the whole thing when ready. I'll be trying that this year - if I can get them to germinate.

We also harvested some purple sprouting - every early. Although it has been wet it has been very mild.

Time to get going on the plot!