How not to grow carrots

Photo by Rob Friesel

In our naivete, as previously explained, we assumed life wouldn't ever interfere with garden glory. In our poorly worked carrot patch, I had sprinkled an entire packet of seeds in rows occupying a space little larger than a square metre. Fools!

Our carrots grew, miraculously enough, though at the most ridiculously slow pace imaginable.

Now, some may ask why this was a problem at all. Well, it's not, really. Not if you are diligent in your tendings and once your carrot-tops are about an inch high (3-ish cm) you remember to go back and thin them to finger-width apart. Then a few weeks later, thin them again, harvesting the in-betweens as baby carrots, leaving the rest, happily spaced, to grow into big, strong mega carrots! We did none of the above.

I say we...It was my job, and I got heavily distracted by life not long after planting in Feb/Mar. In that time, I got married, experienced a bit of life drama, and hid from the winter chill quite a lot! This led to fifty thousand little carrots vying for what tiny bit of nutrition they could suck from the soil.

The upside? We planted in Aussie Autumn, and we finally harvested our last sad little carrots in October. The downside? The aforementioned sad little carrots.

This season, we'll do better.