Parsnips new seed?

[saddad]

Morning all, our soil is now officially warm enough to sow parsnips... was clearing out a box of parsnips yesterday... ready to prepare the bed for the spuds in a couple of weeks and a short section of about 6" had failed to germinate last year, what do I find but several little parsnip seedlings, (easy to recognise with the seed case still on the leaves!) with a beautifully straight 4" of tap root!

Bring on the 

[saddad]

[Plot22]

I am not sure that I understand what you are trying to say. Maybe it's  because I am a bit thick or it's an age thing. Having said that I have to disagree that this is the time to sow parsnips . In the years gone by parsnips were the first thing that I sowed late March early April but if you sowed at that time of the year come Christmas you find that you have grown monster parsnips with a big inedible centre core. Now I sow mid to late May and a have lovely small parsnips right into January when they have all been harvested or frozen. I used to chit the seeds on damp kitchen towel and the get on my hands and knees with a pair of tweezers and plant them. Alas no more I have a bad knee because I fell down at the allotment onto a concrete path so instead I use pelleted seeds and seldom have to thin them or perhaps just once and I have perfect parsnips right until the end of the season

[saddad]

Pleased your parsnips grow well... I was just observing that we are always advised to use fresh seed, when these had been sitting in the soil all year and germinated. So clearly the soil conditions there were right for them now.

[gray1720]

We had a couple of derelict plots on our allotment that were always knee-deep in self-sown parsnips. I even sowed a few seeds myself (they were pretty nice parsnips, actually) - I guess their evolutionary strategy is just to produce absolute manure-loads of seeds, and some will be OK.

One of the disadvantages of being fully allocated is you lose the weird and wonderful self-sown plots - though that depends on what they have on them! Blackberries.. great! Hedge bindweed.... Grrr!