Kitchen Garden Forum

I let one of last winter's parsnips go to seed and have watched the subsequent seed be blown all over neighbouring beds. I just wanted to see what would happen. As you all probably know, parsnips have a mind of their own. Whenever you plant them in specially looked after beds, they either never germinate or drop down dead out of malice. It is now December and I have thousands of young green-leaved parsnips thrusting up everywhere. They are seemingly not worried at all by the frost, although it is difficult to say whether or not they are actually growing much. One of my friends on the plot says that he has read they will not survive the winter. Is he right?
I undertook this experiment after letting a salisfy plant do exactly the same. About five years later on, I still get a regular mini-crop of self-set salisfy growing in the most unusual of places, nearly all of them beyond the ken of a bright gardener!!
I have also let a carrot and a beetroot do the same thing, although neither of these has yet produced any results. I await the Spring with interest....

I wold have thought the parsnip would survive the winter okay, given that the seed packets say to sow in Feb, so they must be pretty hardy. I've had parsnips come through the winter, though they're pretty tough and woody.

I find fennel self seeds in my garden all over the place.

I get feverfew everywhere in mine. My husband ventured out blinking into the sunlight one day and sowed some. It came up, we forgot about it and now....
Still, if it gives me a headache it cures it too!

I've had some nice parsnips this year which I sowed btween cabbages last year. They did little, survived the winter and have now done well once the cabbages were out of the way.

mike