This week on the plot - 27/2-2/3/12

Ultra busy week on the plot brought about by a week of dry(ish) weather. Motivated by needing to feel that everything was under control so that there is space for plants to go in when they're ready.

 So this week on the plot:

 Space made ready for first early potatoes

Compost bin turned into the one emptied last week

 then refilled with the contents that were in here

 Red Sun shallots planted (which curiously smelled like garlic!)

 and covered so the pesky birds dont pull them out

Space made ready for onion sets to go in in a couple of weeks

And then finally today pallets de-constructed (with limited swearing and only a couple of hand/hammer incidents)

 and the edges of my 30m path started to be edged

 which will then have weed membrane put down and bark chippings added on top in a couple of weeks.

I've managed to fit a lot in to the couple of hours I've spent there each day. Everything feels like its coming together now. Tis very good :)

Parsnips

I inspected the parsnip seeds when I got home last night and there were quite a lot that have germinated. 

The trick I've found in the past is not to let them get too big before trying to move them. Last year I moved them straight into their final locations at the plot with very poor results due to a very dry spring. This year I decided to go the slightly longer route, but a more reliable one for getting a good crop.

Using an old jam funnel I filled the toilet roll tubes to about an inch from the top with multi-purpose compost 

and firmed it down

Carefully handling the seeds only by the seed case placed them onto the firmed down compost. This is now where I could (probably) bore you by explaining about tropisms, types of germination and root hairs. 

Normal advice is not to handle the seeds when they are in this state as the developing shoot is very fragile. However I have had good success from this before and handling the seed only by the seed case eliminates most cases of damage occuring.

Some of the seeds havent yet germinated and may not (I will leave these a few more days to see if any more do then repeat the process above). This is the whole reason that I have come to use this method of sowing parsnips. They have a ridiculously poor germination percentage under good circumstances and in the past I've had 3 rows of parsnips where there have been 5 seeds all develop at one end and nothing else in the whole row. Doing this means that they will get planted out as plants, at the correct final spacing, and there wont be any need for thinning out, or empty rows with sporadic crops.

 Finally watered gently and now in the (unheated) greenhouse to grow on for a while.