Carrots! Purple ones, orange ones, cream ones, yellow ones… they all make for rainbow salads, just at the point when the summer of colors coming out of the market garden is starting to wind down for winter…
So while we have a kind of anti-spring festival here in the southern hemisphere every Easter, we do have one thing that supposedly goes with bunnies, even if the hens have all decided to wrap it up for the year and stop laying…
Carrots popping their heads up, 16th March
24 March, coming along...
31st March - first of the baby carrots!
Carrot, onion, radish and marigold petal salad, served up for lunch on our Field Day, 1st April...
All the chooks have decided to wind down for winter it seems, so our egg count is distinctly lower with each day. But hey, we’ve got carrots! And pumpkins and leafy greens and our friend’s pork and a host of other Autumn lovelies to keep the festive cheer flowing.
Happy Easter everyone and, as Joel Salatin says, may all your carrots grow long and straight. Unless of course they decided to cuddle up, like a few of ours..
May all your carrots grow long and straight. Unless they're in love, in which case that's fine too.
Big thanks to Stephen, Milkwood’s resident market gardener (and Michael too), for growing such gorgeous carrots. And to Rose for making them even more scrumptious.
10 Comments
This looks incredibly delicious! Beautiful carrots.
They are so beautiful. My daughter resisted carrots as a little thing, and then she saw a purple one. She is now a devoted carrot eater – some of us just need a little color with our carrots. Congratulations on reaching the lovely harvest time. We have to wait quite a while.
How do you deal with the carrot saw fly (that makes black tunnels in the roots)? Or hasn’t it made it to the southern hemisphere…. yet?
Also, thanks a bunch for all the ‘beginning-growing-results’ photos! So helpful and inspiring
Until recently I had never head of purple or even cream color carrots. How do they taste compared to orange carrots?
I love the beautiful bright pictures of all the colourful carrots:) Please give a great big hello to our friend Kenton from Canada who has recently joined your crew and we wish you all a Happy Easter full of good food and good friends
Are any of those from the seed tape? I’m a somewhat poor carrot grower and was wondering if the seed tape may be the solution?
When your hens are slowing down, turn to the dockside (my corny wife’s suggestion). We’re still getting 3 eggs from 3 Peking ducks every day without fail. To top that, 2 out of 3 of those are double yolkers which turn into scrambled eggs every morning for the kids.
Hello Lightfoot Education
The carrot seeds are not from tape – just sown by hand. I did use tape in QLD but cannot say that germination was any better really. We cover our newly seeded rows in sack-cloth until germination begins – this certainly helped. To be recommended as it keeps the soil damp in those critical early days after sowing.
I don’t thin them either – somewhat romantically I reckon every seed is sacred and let nature decide which will do best. Those multi-coloured carrots are from Diggers Seeds and did very well – some big, some small. All tasted wonderful.
Thanks Stephen, I might give the sack cloth a go next time. I will confess, however, that I’m a poor carrot grower partly due to my aversion to growing things in rows! For the sake of getting a crop I’m sure I can overcome that obstacle. Two little rows of parsnips coming up at the moment are encouraging…