delicious home grown carrots

The difference between fresh, organic carrots grown yourself and the poor, bland things you buy in supermarkets is huge. I have just chopped some up for slow oven roasting in a savoury winter variation of the English classic bread and butter pudding.

This was a good year for late carrots. The late summer rains nourished the young plants and their roots have swollen to a good size.

Carrots fit into our four year organic rotation with onions, garlic, leeks and shallots. After the summer onions have been harvested we hoe and rake the ground over and then sow our autumn carrot seed.

Autumn carrots are not affected by carrot root fly, and as long as you can get the soil good and moist, the carrots will germinate without any problem.

I have toyed with creating a carrot clamp to store the carrots over the winter. In the ground they are open to attack from slugs and from rabbits. The Hercule Poirots among you may spot the telltale bite marks of a rabbit on the foliage: a diagonal cut across the stem.

Our bronze age forbears learned that sealed straw lined holes in the ground were perfect stores for grain. The grain breaths in oxygen and breaths out carbon dioxide which creates a preserving blanket of co2. A carrot clamp would work in the same way.

I haven't tried it, but will - when I get some spare time!

carrots:autumn king

This has been a good year for us for autumn carrots.

Autumn carrots are sown in late spring/early summer after the overwintering onions are lifted. The ground is tidied, hoed and raked over and drills made about 1cm deep.

They need a consistent level of water to germinate and this year we got lucky. The seed bed was well-watered after sowing and then we had rain: excellent germination.

The young carrots crowd together and have to be 'thinned' so that there is space for them to grow. These 'thinnings' are not wasted. They are succulent and sweet and it is tempting to eat them all before they have got home.

An advantage of late carrots is that they are not prone to the dreaded carrot root fly in the way that their spring sown cousins e.g. early Nantes are.

We are now lifting the carrots. What a treat; absolutely nothing tastes like a fresh carrot. A taste sensation! Forget those you get in the supermarket in plastic bags. These are the real deal.

All I did was chop off the tops, scrub them, slice length ways and quickly boil them. They were great for dinner on Sunday.

rainbow bunch

Still away but almost back! Hoping that the rainbow carrots have swollen with buckets of rain while we bathed in sunshine.
The red ones better get going too. Yellow and white go well with orange, but burgundy red would look stunning in the bunch.

Thinning out carrots

Whether grown in beds or in containers, broadcast or seed drilled, carrots grow too closely together and need 'thinning'. Fingers go through the base of the foliage and pull out plants that are too close to their neighbours. The plants left in the soil will then grow on to make big strong carrots that can be eaten later in the season.
The 'thinnings' are sweet and tasty and just great to eat now!