Free Parsnips!

These are the first parsnips I've ever grown! They were never going to win any root vegetable beauty pageants but boy were they tasty!

This Easter I made three raised beds, 3 foot by 4 foot each, out of old floorboards I had to replace. They've worked pretty well. One gave us all our salad from July to late October. Another gave us about 1000000 tonnes of string beans, spinach and slug-ridden cabbage and the other one had spuds, carrots and parsnips. The parnips and the spuds surprised me by growing about 10 feet tall and completely smothering the carrots. I thought I only planted about 15 plants but I'm sure there are about 50 out there. I planted them in March so it's been a bit of a wait.

This is not self-sufficiency. We'll still be going to the supermarket. But it's sooo nice to eat stuff you've grown. For starters, it tastes loads better than anything you can buy. It's probably psychological, but they do.

I'm on a bit of a learning curve, and loads of stuff got eaten by slugs, but I've got big plans for an organic, slug free veg patch next year, if I could only find a truely effective organic anti-slug strategy.