Carrots

 

        Several years ago someone told me about edible landscaping. This is where edible plants are used instead of decorative plants in landscaping. An example would be planting berry bushes or fruit trees. As much as I'd like to do this, I'm not sure I'm good enough with plants to be able to make this work. I do believe in growing at least a few things we can eat so I'm trying things in out garden. 

        One of my most successful trials of food plants have been carrots.  Last year we had open space in our garden where the lemon balm plants used to be. My Dad suggested growing carrots. Dad has been a fairly successful gardener in the past so I did what he said. I bought some carrots seeds and planted them.

        I read information on growing carrots and learned that once the seeds are planted it's important to water them daily. Every day I watered the seeds until the ground was moist. Once I saw that the plants were well established, they were watered when needed along with the rest of the garden. I made sure to weed them so the seedlings could grow. 

        When autumn came I harvested one of the beds that I planted. It was clear that I should have thinned the bed out. I did get a good crop. About a month later, I harvested the other bed. Then I did something I always wanted to do, made carrot cake with carrots I grew myself. The cake was good.

        The challenge was that I had more carrots than c or I could eat. I used as many as I could, but after awhile even I got tired of eating them. I'm sure they could be cooked and frozen, but I'm not a fan of mushy carrots,  Many of them went bad and I had to throw them out.

        I planted carrots again this year just to see if last year was a fluke. Since I got a good crop last year, I should have planted a bit less. I was worried that the seeds wouldn't come up though so I planted four rows. I watered the seeds as I did last year and the carrots grew up. During the time when I should have thinned them I was working so it didn't get done.

        We harvested them last week and I got a whole wheelbarrowful of carrots. I'm not sure how much, but I'm guessing around ten pounds. C and I did a rough cleaning in the yard then a better cleaning in the kitchen sink. I bagged them according to size and put them on our porch as the fridge was full. This year I made some carrot muffins that are very good and moist. I gave two bags away to friends and peeled one of the bags of smaller carrots to use for snacks. These carrots are also very good.

        I think carrots will be once of the things I regularly plant. Now I need to find something else to try. maybe peas....