Cultivated plants: Parsnips

We've had a week of glorious sunny weather (ending abruptly late this morning. We're back in the clouds now.) which made it a pleasure to get out into the garden.

There are spring flowers...

... much cat-rolling...

... and the lizards came out to enjoy the sunshine.

In veg bed A, I noticed some seedlings. Are they...?

In amongst the weeds, some of those seedlings look like...

Yes, I thought so! Parsnips (Pastinaca sativa)

I'd left a few parsnips to flower and set seed in this area, so it wasn't a great surprise to see parsnip seedlings coming up here. Having seen them, it seemed like a good idea to use these seedlings rather than start from scratch with germinating more seeds. I carefully lifted some of the seedlings and laid them between layers of soil in a seed tray. Most of them are still there, but I have planted out one row in veg bed C.

Transplanted parsnip seedlings

This row is flanked by shallots and garlic, though you can't see those yet as they're under the surface. I'd like four rows of parsnips altogether, so there's a bit more work to do yet.

Other garden tasks this week

• Sowing more peas
• Sowing seeds of sugar beet, Welsh onions, strawberries, tomatoes and potatoes in the greenhouse. The latter three are in the heated propagator and I'm sure I must have cooked them by now. I'll have to wait a bit longer before I give up on them, though. Here's a photo from last week of the nice, clean greenhouse, before I started getting it dirty again.
  
  I also fixed up a couple of wires to hang strings from for supporting tomatoes.
  
• Moving more soil and plants to the terrace
• Weeding - always weeding

Also harvesting this week
Brocolli
Unexpected potatoes. They get less unexpected each time I find another one.
Nettle tips
Bittercress
Leeks

Also eating
Bullace fruit leather
Rosehip vinegar

Also drinking
Heather ale
Dandelion wine

Cultivated plants challenge summary page here.