Parsnip woes

Today is long carrot seed sowing day. The drums are ready, the sun is out but I'll be in the garage all day sieving compost & preparing the mixes. Photos will follow later hopefully.

However, my 'Pinnacle' parsnips are starting to concern me. They came through very erratcially and I still have about 6 stations that haven't come through at all. After all that banging on about pre-chitting your seed for some reason it hasn't worked very well for me this year. And those seedlings that have emerged are very small, pallid, sickly looking specimens. I've taken the precaution of putting some more seed on damp tissue paper in a tupperware container to chit, the variety being Polar another F1 variety that I haven't grown before. If Pinnacle shows no sign of motoring on in the next few days I will have no hesitation in scrapping the lot and starting again with this new batch. It will soon catch up I have no doubt.

Meanwhile, I shall make my annual plea for people to make sure they have slug pellets to hand that can be used SENSIBLY! Nothing deals with snails and slugs like pellets and I have to laugh at some of the remedies offered up on various gardening forums. By all means f*ck about with beer traps, piles of bran, copper bands and meditation but rest assured that none of these methods actually f*cking work! Once I have done my carrots I shall scatter some pellets on each drum. Past experience has taught me that slugs and snails have no problem climbing several feet to crawl over sharp sand to eat my newly emerged carrot seedlings. In fact scientists have shown that these little critters can in fact crawl over razor blades without any adverse damage to their snotty selves! F*ckers!