First harvest 2012

I haven’t posted since last year, and it seemed like time to make some changes to the blog.  Limestone Country Veggies was kind of, well, pretentious, so the title has been changed.  I considered calling this Hoosier Hick’s Bean Patch but then decided to just go with my first name.   I also fiddled with the background design from Blogger’s templates.  I’m hoping that the fonts changing on a whim will not be such a problem this year.  We’ll see.  Seems Blogger doesn’t like it when I paste the text in from Word using a font not in its template.  Anyway, hope it’s readable and the information useful.  On to the post.

More warm weather, ground thawed out, time to pull up more parsnips.  I pulled up 2 more rows.  These are big snips, some of them were a foot and a half long, and that’s just the taproot that come out of the ground.  Even after tossing out a few of them there were 3 pounds, 14 oz of parsnips.  Parsnips are great for breaking up the soil – after I pulled them up the soil where they grew looks like it was freshly tilled.  There must be several more feet of taproot left in the ground that pierces the heavy clay undersoil and brings up nutrients.  The taproot left behind will decay and leave channels for earthworms to use.  One of the ‘snips that I pulled up had a big fat worm hanging on to it.   And yes the grass is still green. 

That really fat parsnip with the forked roots may look a little funny but it was delicious sliced, drenched in olive oil and roasted.  A good freeze really makes them sweeter.  There’s 2 more rows in the ground, another batch to pick in a few weeks.

These are the beds in January.  It’s hard to believe the grass is still green, the pond is open.  It has been a very warm winter.  The past two winters have been very cold, so it is a relief.  Usually the pond is several feet down in the winter, but not this year, it’s been very rainy.