Chris Collins from Garden Organic reveals his favourite varieties and explains how to grow them
As the growing season gets closer it’s very tricky not to get excited about the wonderful organic food we raise from seed. It’s time to start readying our seed beds and propagators, and starting off some of the absolute classics of the British dinner table: the root crops which can be grown successfully in deeper containers and raised beds.
Perfect parsnips
This root vegetable is full of flavour and it’s hard to imagine a Sunday dinner without them. Germination with parsnips is always patchy. The seeds have low viability in a short space of time and the crop can often be disappointing. As they need cooler temperatures, a propagator is out of the question – but the humble toilet roll provides the solution!
Sown directly into toilet rolls with a good peat-free compost, then packed into a seed tray and placed in a cool, outdoor environment, germination can be near 80%.
Sowing them in this way also means you can transfer them straight onto their final destination without root disturbance, and the rolls simply rot away.
Delicious heritage carrots
Carrots can be sown straight into a seed bed with no trouble, and they will transplant happily if you want to grow them elsewhere. They do well in containers, with the addition of horticultural sand.
If sowing direct, choose nice crumbly, stone-free fertile soil. Sow in a drill (a straight line guided by a string held taut between two canes) and this will help you identify your seedlings upon germination.
For especially flavoursome carrots, try delicious heritage varieties such as ‘London Market’ and ‘Johns Purple’, which leave supermarket carrots in the shade.
Not forgetting swede and turnips
Two more root crops that don’t get the recognition they deserve. Both can be sown directly in open ground or containers and are very effective at germination.
Sow thickly to give some competition after germination, then remove excess seedlings to give them space.
The great news about these crops is they can be sown now, or much later in the season, as and when gaps open up in your growing spaces.
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Chris’s Q&As
Q. Should I water parsnips?
A. Regular watering in the early days, once transplanted, can help parsnips establish. But once they have a decent crown of foliage, they become quite hardy characters and will crack on with producing delicious, edible roots without much help.
Q. How can I avoid carrot fly?
A. Organic methods include a technique used as far back as the Victorian era, which is to grow them in pots that have a height over 25cm (10in). The flies don’t travel at that height so your carrots will be safe.
Laying fine eco-netting over your crops, will also help, as will covering the scent of foliage (which the carrot fly hunts down) with strong-smelling companion planting such as onions and herbs nearby.
Q. I find turnips often have woody centres; how do I prevent this?
A. Turnips are best pulled up as and when they’re needed rather than being harvested all at once. They’re ready to eat when they’re golf ball size for early sown varieties, so don’t leave them too long as they tend to become woody towards the end of the harvesting time.
You can also eat young turnip leaves as the plants will regrow many times.
For more organic gardening advice head to www.gardenorganic.org.uk, where you can also find out how to become a member and support the charity.
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