Early Carrots

Saturday produced another nice February day and as we hadn't been down to the plot for over a month due to the weather and problems having our gas main replaced we decided on a visit.

I’m not going to dwell on the fact that our over wintering brassicas have been totally decimated by wood pigeons. The only decision to be made is whether or not to net them now and see if they recover and produce some sort of crop. I had my doubts about our remaining carrots left in the ground to over winter.

All they've had for frost protection is some loose straw around the roots. With all the frost, rain and snow of the last few weeks I wouldn't have been surprised if the carrots underneath had turned to mush.

As you can see we’re not too good at thinning out carrots. Once sown they’re left to get on with it. I suppose thinning out might produce better looking carrots but we only want them for the pot not the show bench.

One thing I discovered digging up these roots was that the soil is far too wet to work as it glued itself to my fork as I dug around the carrots. The carrots looked a bit of a mess when first dug having lots of muddy gooey soil sticking to the roots. 

Once washed they didn't look too bad. They have some slug and carrot root fly damage so there is some wastage on the carrots but these are Early Nantes sown last spring as an early crop which have managed to over winter reasonable well without too much effort from me. They still tasted good when cooked which is one of the reasons for growing your own.

It helped make up a little bit for the disappointment of those devastated brassicas but not completely.

Copyright: Original post from Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett