Parsley root in "beautiful" forms

Parsley root in

The attempt to finally be able to make long straight supermarket delicious parsley roots has today turned out to have fallen such a little la la out.

I had otherwise done everything humanly possible for beauty. Choose a variety that was least likely to branch, choose a bed where cabbage had never been grown before (to avoid that nematodes had multiplied), and put plastic over the bed to achieve the optimal germination temperature. Holes were then made with a planting stick at a distance of 10 cm, which was filled with fine-grained (and finally well-turned!) Compost so that the roots would not meet the slightest resistance on the way down. 4-5 seeds were sown per hole, and later thinned into a single plant (by pinching rather than pulling up the excess plants). And on top of that, it was sown on a root day.

And this is the result of all the effort. Admittedly, there are a few who would be able to handle the supermarket's beauty check, but the vast majority have split into several roots, and mostly look like something in between a crippled squid and a pulled-out cheek tooth. So all indications are that I just have to get used to them being like that - and next year I will do nothing but throw the seeds in the ground?

Written by Peter Norris, October 17, 2018