Carrots

 

   Gardening can be a frustrating hobby. For most of my life I've been able to keep only extremely hardy plants alive. When we moved into our house I acquired a garden along with a wish from our next door neighbor to "do something with it". (It was a mess of out of control plants and weeds.)

   Over the years I've managed to grow things in it, some years more successfully than others.  Lately I've had a desire to grow more vegetables and more kinds of vegetables. My Dad suggested we try growing carrots. Since carrots are my favourite vegetable, I thought this was an excellent idea.

   There were a few problems starting out. The first one is that carrots are grown from seed. I hadn't grown anything from seed since I was a kid. I don't have any place in the house that has enough light to start things at the end of winter. When it is time to put the garden in, we buy plants from a local nursery. We got the garden in late this spring because of cold weather that lasted into May. The other challenge was finding time to do what needed to be done to prepare the soil. By the time we got things ready it was later in the growing season. A lot of the places that carry seeds had stopped carrying them or had a very limited selection. 

   We did find some carrot seeds. I read the directions on how to plant them. I planted some of the seeds in a row and some of the I scattered in an area. I suspect that I did two things wrong. I didn't plant them deep enough and I didn't water them correctly. I few times I used the wrong setting on our hose and I think the seeds got washed away. I also think I may not have watered them enough.

   I waited and waited and prayed and waited for seedlings to come up. I kept the area weeded as best I could waiting for the little carrot seedlings to make their way through the soil. Finally I saw three tiny green carrot tops poke out of the ground. Of all the seeds I planted only three had come up. Oh well, that is three more than I had before.

   All through the summer I watched the carrot plants grow. I watered then and put some fertilizer on them. They grew and grew. I asked my Dad how to tell when they are ready to harvest. Once they got to the point when I thought they might be ready, I carefully brushed the dirt away. The carrot seemed pretty thin. I covered it back up. Not time yet. 

   Earlier this week, I was doing some weeding. I hadn't tended to the garden much aside of watering it for the last fe weeks so the weeds were pretty prolific. The carrot tops were tall and green and healthy. I carefully brushed away the dirt from the top. What I saw was a nicely sized carrot. Time to harvest.

   I got four carrots out of the ground. The were not very long, but they were growing close together so it was time to get them out of the ground. There was a fifth very thin carrot that I put back into the ground. I'm not sure if it will continue to grow.  I laid out my carrots and took a picture of them to show my Dad. They looked and smelled like the carrots we used to grow when I was a kid. Back then I would have washed the carrot with a garden hose and ate it on the spot.

   Instead I took my carrots into the kitchen and washed them off in the sink. I left them on the counter for C to see. He was pleased with what we had. 

   That evening we had a salad with our supper. I peeled and sliced our carrots to put in the salad. They were delicious.

   Next year I will buy the seeds early and plant them the correct way. Maybe we'll have more carrots and I can make a carrot cake with them.