Parsnips, And Two Lives, Come Full Circle

The month of April has taken the frost out of the ground and I have taken the parsnips. They overwintered just fine in our zone 4 garden, protected from the deep cold by a good blanket of snow. Their tops had begun to green, Nature's signal that we had better use them while they have plenty of sugar left or Nature will use the sugar to form their seed stalks. So I took what we needed and left the rest to complete their biennial cycle and set their seeds.

We save seeds of our open-pollinated vegetables every year and look forward to a good harvest of 'Hollow Crown' parsnip seeds in August. Saving seeds saves us a little money and gives us a larger sense of self-sufficiency, and the pleasure of seeing our vegetables complete their lifecycles, itself a reflection and a foreshadowing of our own destiny.

It is an expression of that sense of Nature's completeness that led us to write our next book, due out in Spring 2011. Over nearly a century of combined gardening experience we have taught folks how to plant, care for, and harvest their crops. So it was only fitting that in our next book we tell readers how to save the seeds of nearly 2,000 species of vegetables, herbs, flowers, fruit, trees, and shrubs. It is a thorough book that itself completes our own journey in horticulture. We have come full circle, from seed to seed. The parsnips I left in the ground will do the same and that is good.

—Dr. Bob Gough