Selfsufficientish.com

....or at least my polytunnel does. Having been distracted by helping my daughter start her bakery, OHs health issues and generally being just plain fed up, the polytunnel rather ran away from us. So we cleared it out in early spring and started from scratch - the idea being to use it as a mini forest garden, with citrus trees (they don't do well in the house because of the central heating,
in winter), other fruit trees (we found several ailing specimens still in packets that we forgot about), fruit bushes (ditto) and tomatoes and other usual polytunnel/greenhousey stuff.

What we didn't account for were all the self-set nasturtiums, parsnips and cauliflowers! We're eating the nasturtiums as fast as we can but the place is packed. Oh, and we have a baby lemon tree that has self-set from from one of the fallen lemons - how did that happen, the lemons are not much bigger than a pip.

You mean that's what your tunnel looks like after weeks and weeks of neglect? It looks like something I would have been pleased to call "Fine".

Perhaps I should take up knitting.

Mike

No, Mike, this is planned + extras.

I'm sure it was on here I read that parsnips were quite difficult to start - not here, they start themselves. The trouble is we don't have the heart to pull up the self sets, so they're in addition to everything we deliberately planned. It has rather buggered up any rotation, with caulis, parsnips and red mustard sprouting all over.

I'm rather intrigued Maggie, to get self seeded parsnips rather implies that you allowed at least one parsnip to flower. I never grow enough to be that wanton as to leave one or more at the end of the season. Roast parmesan coated parsnip soup is a big hit here and I never grow enough for soup and Sunday roast to last all winter.

I'm jealous. Never, in the entirety of my life, have I ever managed to get a parsnip past germination. Not a single one.

When my OH cleared the polytunnel, in the spring, the parsnip plants were up to the roof - 8' something!

We had, quite literally, left it to its own devices for over a year and that's what happened. And that's why we haven't got the heart to pull them - I've no idea what they'll be like because I'm guessing they'll be the grandchildren of the ones we planted.