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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Thinking Carrots
  • Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 20:11:53 -0600


Found this amusing and informative, esp since the area (Eldorado, NM) they
're talking about is only a few miles from where we're growing.

paul, tradingpost@riseup.net
---------------

Thinking Carrots
http://www.eldoradosun.com/Archives/01-06_issue/Wild%20.htm

OK people, think carrots. Why carrots? Because carrots are challenging, and
you need a garden challenge this year. So, on the first pleasant winter day,
start small by marking off a square 4 feet on a side in full sun wherever
convenient. Strike it with a pickax. If the pickax bounces off the frozen
soil, you are temporarily off the hook. In a few days try again — with global
warming our high-desert soil is workable ridiculously early. If it is, say a
prayer for the ailing planet, and start excavating. The thinking part of this
exercise is officially over.


Notice I said excavating, not digging. Digging is what gardeners do in the
Midwest, where they have topsoil. I assume your carrot-plot-in-the-making is
a former parking lot and that the topsoil eroded away centuries ago.
Excavating is brutal, backbreaking work. Don’t be tempted to hire a backhoe
or an able-bodied man from south of the border — the carrots won’t taste as
good if you do.

Stop excavating when, as you stand in the bottom of the pit, your kneecaps
are at the original soil level. Before you will be a large mound of soil with
lots of rocks. Remove the largest rocks. Then get back in the hole and attack
the subsoil with your pick. It will be like hitting concrete. Don’t stop
until there is loose rubble a foot deep at the bottom of the pit; leave it
there. At this point, the neighbors may start asking questions. Tell them you
are constructing a burial chamber — they may question your sanity if you tell
them the truth.

Fill the pit with water from your washing machine, dishwasher, shower or
whatever. Do it several times. Then scour the neighborhood for straw, leaves,
kitchen scraps, yard trimmings or any kind of animal manure — in short, plant
material that was once alive or passed through an animal’s digestive tract.
When the pit is brimming with your rotting collections, shovel the excavated
soil on top to create a huge mound. Rake it flat and border either with straw
bales, wooden planks (not railroad ties — they’re toxic) or large rocks. Or
just rake a lip around the edges. The idea here is to create a raised basin
to hold the water that you continue applying until the soil is saturated.

By this time, it’s probably March and your back is somewhat recovered. It’s
also a couple of months earlier than the helpful people at the County
Agricultural Extension Office recommend for planting carrots. But do it
anyway. I plant the early variety “Nelson” (a politically incorrect hybrid),
available from Johnny’s Selected Seeds (www.johnnyseeds.com). It’s a smooth,
6-inch variety with the best eating quality I’ve seen in an early carrot.
Early carrots are smaller and generally not as tasty as those maturing in the
fall, so plant the best. In my opinion, the best is not what you grab at the
last minute in the big-box stores.

On a nice day, spread sifted compost, if you have it, or a few bags of
topsoil, and work it into the top few inches of the bed along with several
handfuls of Yum-Yum, an organic fertilizer available from most nurseries.
Make furrows a few inches apart and about an inch deep with your fingers,
then place two to three carrot seeds per inch in the furrow bottom, press in
with the back of your hand, and just cover with sifted compost or topsoil. It
will take time to get the right spacing, but it’s time well spent. Densely
packed carrot seedlings are a huge annoyance to thin. Enjoy the pleasant
aroma emitted by carrot seeds and plant patiently.

To make amends for ignoring the County Agricultural Extension Agent’s proper
planting date, you must capture the power of the spring sun. Try this: Make
hoops with malleable plastic plumbing pipe, drape clear plastic over and
secure with clothespins. This contraption might survive the spring dust
storms. If not, you’ll see plastic spread around the yard as you pull into
the driveway. The details of building something more substantial to secure
the plastic covering are up to you. Good luck.

Carrot seeds germinate unevenly in early spring over a two- or three-week
period. Check the bed every day, and keep moist by lightly sprinkling water
during the warmest part of the day. After the ferny-looking adult leaves
appear, ventilate by opening the ends of the plastic tunnel during the day.
Go out at night with a flashlight and squash or remove slugs, snails, pill
bugs (also known technically as roly-polies because they roll into tiny gray
balls when disturbed) or greasy-looking cutworms. And, oh yes, don’t forget
to weed. Carrots seem to grow slowly at first because most of the action is
below ground, where they are putting down a deep taproot, so be patient. Pay
attention night and day to your little ones.

Unless you sowed with perfect spacing and had perfect germination, after four
or five weeks you will have to thin. I usually put off thinning far too long,
which slows maturity and reduces the size of the final product. Getting
started is the hard part; once started, thinning carrots is just a regular
garden chore. Leave each carrot a thumb width apart; remove the plastic
covering in early May. Baby carrots are ready to pick by late May and plump,
mature ones through early summer.

It’s not over yet — in fact, the best is yet to come. When July rolls around,
pull any weeds you have missed and harvest any remaining carrots and put them
in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. Use a garden fork to loosen the top
foot of soil, then add a couple more inches of sifted compost or topsoil and
a few more handfuls of Yum-Yum. Rake smooth and plant as before during the
first week of July, not later.

Carrot seed goes dormant when soil temperatures are high, so shade cloth must
be draped over the bed at this time of year and a light, cooling sprinkling
of water applied at least once a day. With such care, seeds germinate quickly
and more evenly than in early spring and produce baby carrots by late August.
Remove the shade cloth when adult leaves appear. The best carrot to plant in
early July is a big fall-maturing variety like “Sugarsnax” (another hybrid
available from Johnny’s Selected Seeds). High in beta-carotene, an
antioxidant and precursor of vitamin A, Sugarsnax makes nutritious juice and
tender eating even when large. These are carrots to die for — deep orange,
crunchy and sweet as the cool fall weather converts their starches to sugars.

Fall carrots are easily overwintered by covering with bales of straw after
the first hard frost; it helps if your bed is also bordered with straw bales.
To pick in the dead of winter, just roll the bales aside. In the ground
carrots stay in excellent condition through April — that is, if not
discovered by the neighborhood pocket gophers. One year they ate every one of
my overwintered crop. I now put traps in their runs at the first sign of
freshly dug mounds. Trapping not for you? Call Gary Davis at 466-2301 and
he’ll do the nasty business.

I also save a few big overwintered carrots and replant them at the same depth
in an odd corner or two the following spring. The noble carrot Daucus carota
var. sativus is a biennial, meaning it puts up 3-foot stalks the second year
bedecked with masses of tiny white flowers arranged in elegant umbrella-like
domes. Flowering carrots are magnets for attracting ladybirds, lacewings and
other beneficial insects to your garden. They look for all the world like
Queen Anne’s lace, a charming roadside weed in wetter climates; in fact,
these two closely related members of the Umbelliferae plant family
cross-pollinate if grown together.

Now, people, you are free ponder the fruits of your labors. From a mere 16
square feet of carefully prepared soil, water, organic matter and seed, you
have gathered between 30 and 50 pounds of carrots. Thinking is now permitted.
Nothing would have happened if you thought too much.





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