Sowing Carrots After School

 All week he'd been on about sowing some carrots in the garden. So Last Thursday night I prepared a bed with extra compost. We marked out 4 rows and we sowed the seed between us. 

He was so happy to do this! Really makes me happy that he's so keen to grow his own food. 

£3 For 15kg Of Carrots

Now as many of you know I'm never one to pass up on a bargain!

And the other day I picked up a huge 15kg bag of carrots for £3. Bargain!

Now I must confess this isn't at the supermarket, instead I got these from the animal feed store local to us.

Selecting Carrots For Seed Saving

So the seed saving bug was strong on Sunday after the swap!

Pulled up all my Heritage Seed Library carrots, Red Elephant, today for selection. Some are real beauties!

I laid out the 70 or so carrots and then selected the best 32 of the roots for growing on for seed. I could get away with about 20 but more gives them a bigger genetic pool and prevents inbreeding depression. I would have liked to have selected from a bigger group as well but we've eaten quite a few! 

These will get planted in a bed in the spring, quite close together, to flower and pollinate each other.

This will hopefully give me plenty of seed for next year's swap and to send back to the heritage seed library, as well as leaving me enough to feed our family next year. Believe me when i say we eat a lot of carrots!

Anyone else saving carrot seed this year?

Children Picking Veg For Dinner

Although I've not been able to get into the garden as much as I would like lately I have been enjoying seeing the girls in the garden picking stuff for tea.

Our back garden is like a building site at the moment, it'll look much better next year! 

 These are pictures from Monday when they went to pick the veg for a tea, My wife said she's not had to pod a single bean yet, they love sitting there and podding them all and then eating them a little while later once cooked. 

So proud of their pickings. 

They did make me laugh last night when my wife had to do an extra vegetable with tea, because while she was picking some herbs they were pulling up carrots on their own! I love the fact they know which were carrots just by looking at their leaves (they're only two and four). 

Carrots harvested by themselves! 

My eldest was also making me proud the other night when we were at my brothers and she was naming all the herbs and strawberry plants on his patio. 

It's amazing how much they know already! 

Don't let these girls into your garden if you want any veggies left! 

Red Flowered Broad Beans & Dead Carrot Seed

I'm not one to wax lyrically about flowers and the beauty of things, normally for me it's all in the eating, but my red flowered broad beans are simply beautiful. 

 I was late getting them in so they've only just started flowering but they really do look good (I first saw them here last year and mum got me the seeds as a present at Christmas), I'll post some more pictures of them when they're all in flower.

This was some consultation on the fact that one of my beds of roots, that's supposed to be parsnips and carrots, has only  parsnips showing through. I was being a cheap skate and using up my old carrot seed, I pour about three packets together and sowed them really thickly, but only about four seedlings have come up in three ten foot rows. I know they only keep for about a year and I know I should have just chucked them in the bin. 

The stupid thing is I have new carrot seed I bought this year, I was just being tight. It's not he end of the world, I have other carrots planted in Long Furrows and in the bed next to this one, but it is a waste of space and effort. Tomorrow I'll hoe it all over and sow some more, maybe Paris Market this time, a nice round globe type of carrot.

Just parsnips and weeds

Luckily we're not relying on those carrots, failed crops would have a serious impact then, anyone who stores quantities of seeds "just in case" needs to take note!

Does anyone else do things they know they shouldn't when it comes to planting seeds? I think we all try our luck sometimes even though we know we shouldn't and get below par crops as a result.

Clamping Experiment

Back in October I clamped some roots as an experiment in storing some of our produce. Pushing it to the limit I left it until last week to get the carrots out of the shed and see how they faired.

Roots starting to grow again

 It's been an exceptionally mild winter and I know that will have altered the results somewhat as the shed they've been stored in is less than ideal, It's uninsulated and the temperature does fluctuate quite a bit, but we still had edible roots from that little tub.

Some had lost their colour

 I sorted through them and we had enough for tea that night and possibly more if I wasn't being so fussy. Some carrots had completely lost their colour and others were fine. Most had started growing again, although I think this is more to do with the temperature in the shed and once the tops were cut off they were fine, I'm not sure if this alters their nutritional value much as well.

Enough for a meal

The need for picking perfect veg for storage as amplified by this little experiment, as the slightest bit of root fly or a blemish means that the carrot didn't store and in turn it starts to deteriorate which can damage roots around it.

The downside to this whole thing was the fact that the weathers been so mild that they would have stored in the ground just fine with a covering of straw to keep out the light frosts. But you can't predict the weather, and if I ever get round to building a proper root store, knowing we've got a supply through the winter will be a keep part to future self sufficiency. 

Did anyone else store roots over winter? If so how did they fair?

Dairy Free Carrot Cake

My wife has been working her way through our big bag of carrots that we got given.
This is good for me as it means one thing - cake!

Poor quality photo sorry - but it tastes amazing!

She's been playing with the recipe and I'd say its as near to perfect as it's going to get:

175g light muscovado sugar
175ml vegetable oil
3 eggs, beaten
175g self raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3 large carrots, grated
200g raisins
good splash of orange juice

Mix the sugar, oil and eggs together,
Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices,
Add orange juice, carrots and raisins,
Stir well and put into a greased/lined tin,
Bake at 180 degrees c for 45 minutes or until cooked.

Makes a lovely moist cake. You could add walnuts to the mixture if you wanted (we haven't got any at the moment) and you could make an icing to go on top. We decided not to have icing because otherwise our little girl just eats that and leaves the cake, whereas with no icing she eats the cake like it's the last one she's ever going to have!

Carrots

I often get tips for the work I do, but this week dad gave me half of one of his - A 25kg bag of organic carrots.

I certainly wasn't going to turn down half a potato sack full of carrots!

Not sure what we're going to do with them all though - any ideas? I think a carrot soup might be in order...

Clamping roots

I've never clamped roots before so this is a first for me.

I thought I'd have a go on a small scale this year as next year I want to try to store enough to last us through the winter if possible (big plans brewing but more on that later).

 Just carrots and beetroot to left to try this on (Parsnips do better in the ground and are tastier if they've had a frost on them). So I pulled all I had and sorted them into two piles - perfect veg and veg that needs using sooner rather than later - as I've read that if there is any damage then it won't store well.


I layered them in plastic containers with holes in the bottom (a large plant pot in the case of the beets), on a bed of moist sand (builders sand because I'm a builder) with a layer of sand between each layer of veg. I'll store these in the garden shed now until we need them and hopefully they won't go bad!
Any tips on storing roots through the winter?