Carrots.....

....finally! We have had amazingly poor results in the past with our carrot crops. The ones planted in the fall never seem to make much progress (last year 6 survived...mostly eaten by snails if they came up at all) and the ones in the summer wilt in the heat or bolt to seed before the carrots fully develop. We've tried planting under the shade of other plants, which works marginally, and planting later in the fall, which works not at all (no germination in the cold). This year we seem to have hit on the right combination of planting time and location. We planted around the first of March....in a bed previously growing broccoli...and the germination rate was fantastic. Tho the plants grew slowly...they grew!!!

We have been pulling up carrots for about a month now and yesterday I was able to make juice with the 8 lbs. the we picked....yippee yahoo! And the nice thing, the bed is still FULL of carrots. Now the question remains as to how much longer they can handle the 100+ temps before going to seed. This area does get a bit of shade in the afternoon but as soon as the plants start to flower we will pull the entire bed!