Saturday was another dull but mild day. It was especially mild overnight with the temperature not falling below 8°C and rising to 11.6°C during the day.
On the plot we finished off the last bit of digging and tidying up of the refurbished beds on plot 28. The beds have been dug and weeded and are hopefully ready for planting next spring. We’re left with a large pile of bits of old timber which will burnt once its dried out.
I also dug up some carrots whilst we were at the plot. This year we tried a new variety for us called Chantenay Royal from Kings Seeds.
Well this carrot seems to live up to its catalogue description. As I was digging them up its uniformity was the bit that I noticed compared to our other varieties of carrots. As we never thin out our carrots after sowing we tend to get all shapes and sizes and rarely the perfectly shaped specimens seen in the seed catalogues.
Chantenay Royal seems to have done better than most and produced a crop of large uniform carrots. It’s passed the taste test with flying colours and we've even frozen a few roots, tested them and they too have tasted fine although not up to the quality of freshly dug carrots.
It will be interesting to see how its keeping qualities match up to our other carrots which will be protected with straw and left in the ground over winter.
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I'm SO envious of your beautifully cared for allotment beds. The carrots look great, I think I shall try a couple of different varieties next year, so I'll look out for these. My eldest has been helping me look through the seed catalogue and he was suggesting carrots earlier today. We get through masses, even the guinea pigs eat lots, so I can't imagine ever having too many. Hope you both have a good week.
ReplyDeleteWe get through lots of carrots too. Normally we can harvest them from August through to the following April provided my straw protection against frost works okay.
DeleteI think it's an interesting variety. Actually I only plant a variety in my garden. This is my trial planting, cause carrot only grow well on highland tropics. It isn' t easy to find variety that adaptable in warm or hot tropics temperature
ReplyDeleteWe don't have a problem growing crops because it's too warm it's always the other way around for us - the weather isn't warm enough - it doesn't always stop us trying though.
DeleteThe refurbished beds are looking good. I tried some Chantenay last year and wasn't impressed with them but it was a bad year for carrot fly. This year I sowed less of them and got a good crop along with Autumn kings despite the hot dry conditions. I also don't thin mine out either.
ReplyDeleteI might just have been lucky and sowed the ideal amount along the row.
DeleteThose carrots look good and I'm envious that you can keep them in the ground until now without carrot fly damage. I always get a fairly decent crop (all shapes!), and plant within a protective edging of marigolds, but whichever variety I've tried they always end up with some fly damage if left in the soil too long.
ReplyDeleteEverything is looking ship-shape in your beds - wish I could say the same!
We grow our carrots under environmesh from when they are sown until the middle of September when the mesh is removed. We've tried various ways to grow them to reduce carrot fly damage without a lot of success other than using a mesh.
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