Veg4Show

Well my 4ft pipes were not long enough for my parsnips this year so I have started on my plans on how I may be able to overcome this. The one problem I have is I cant just get 8ft pipes and sit them on the ground, I don't have the head height room in the tunnel for that. I also don't want to buy any more pipes as they cost a fortune (not that i payed for any of mine, donated by my father who had some going spare that were 24ft long).

So I'm pretty much stuck with digging down, but with one problem to overcome is, how to stop the pipe from sinking down further than you actually want them to. My first plan includes a wooden board for the pipes to sit on with a hole in each board for the bore hole to go down further into the sand below. The pipes will be supported via another 2 foot of sand on top of that to hold them in place before we get to ground level. I'm also considering using pipe extensions which not only gives me extra height but also i can remove these when my parsnips are ready and have a look at the first 10 inches or so before I even pull them. I'm hoping to add in total at least 3-4 ft extra to what I had this year, about 7-8 foot in total should do it.

Another problem I have to think about is watering, with a board in the way getting water down at the bottom will be difficult, so I will probably add an extra hole in the board at intervals with hose pipes so I can easily water the tap root.

The lengths we go to...