Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Teeny Tiny Carrots

Memorial Day Weekend. The three-day weekend that starts summer. Ours was good. Chip's band played a music festival in Lafayette, Louisiana on Sunday afternoon. They sounded great. After the gig we packed up his drums and drove over to New Orleans. It was a fantastic day to be in the Big Easy. We spent the afternoon cheering for the Rebels in the SEC baseball championship game against LSU. We had a beer in a bar near our hotel and seemed to be the only Rebel fans in the heart of the land of purple and gold. Ole Miss lost, but it was a good way to spend the afternoon.


We had dinner at John Besh's Restaurant August. The food was fabulous. My entree was divine. I had the sabelfish. Dessert was delicious, especially the saltwater taffy ice cream.


After the rainy weather this weekend, my garden really needs some weeding. And mulching. After dinner tonight, I plan to put on some jeans and tackle those weeds head on.

The tomato plants are coming along. The herb garden is doing better than I expected. And the carrots in the veggie garden are finally developing into something. Here's a photo a took of a carrot I pulled up on May 19th...


A teeny tiny carrot. I took a bite and it tasted, well, like a carrot. No surprises there.

Since this is my first year to take on veggie gardening, I feel like lots of the stuff I'm doing is experimental. I'm learning a ton about what works and what doesn't. For example, I've learned that swiss chard would do better in my garden if it was planted earlier. I've learned that I need a better way to stake my peas. The carrots are taking much longer than I expected, and I could stand to plant about three times as many as I planted. And by next year, I think I'll be ready to take on a bit more.

5 comments:

Leah Maria said...

I hope to one day to be able to have a garden of my own. Sure growing up I always hated having to go out and pick the veggies, but I sure do miss those days at the same time. There is nothing like fresh veggies for dinner in the summer time!

Anonymous said...

My carrots are taking forever, too. When did you plant yours? I planted mine in February and they are not as big as yours yet. I read that they get bitter-tasting when the weather gets hot. If mine were the size of yours, I'd probably eat them now since they aren't bitter yet. What variety are they?

Judy said...

We have so few carrots in our garden that I'm chicken to pull them out and check them! HAHA I was told my lettuce wouldn't make it - it is already too hot here and I planted too late - more of a fall crop anyway.

We're finding, through our first garden, that things we grew in our last home totally don't work here. It is like starting over with the old learning curve of gardening!

Lisa Blair said...

Leah, it is funny because I kept telling myself that I was gonna start small with the veggies. Just a few plants to try out veggie gardening. But I kept seeing plants I wanted to grow. Things I remembered my parents or grandparents growing, and it was hard to edit the list. Now I have a garden full of veggies. It has been quite the experiment!

Ginger, I planted "Scarlet Nantes" carrots on February 19. Yeah, with the temps really climbing this week, I should probably harvest them today or tomorrow. Thanks for the advice. Glad you stopped by!

Judy, I know exactly how you feel with the carrots! I don't really have that many, so I don't want to pull them out to test of they are ready. I'm going to try a bunch of things as fall crops. Bok choy, more carrots, lettuce, swiss chard, and any other green I can convince my husband to eat!

Eve said...

I made the mistake of using planting tape for my carrots. I got very few and they grew so slow..Some are still not ready. Tomatoes are doing really well, cantaloupe and watermelon almost ready..my squash didn't do as much as I wanted but I did get some. I replanted squash where I had purple hull peas. So waiting on those to bloom now. It's been a strange seasson for veggies for us.