A successful crop of chantenay of carrots

 

Proudly clutching my crop for the year, all that time, two tiny handfuls

I love growing carrots.  They make so little fuss, so un-needy.  Just sow some seed, water, and then ignore for several months.  And then, as if by magic little orange nuggets form under the soil perfect for eating.  The only problem is I don't have the right soil for carrots.  My soil is heavy heavy clay, so heavy in fact our house is actually situated on the brickyard used to create all the bricks of the other houses built around here.  So thats basically pure clay.

Therefore my carrot crop is somewhat limited.  I would grow row upon row, but I am instead reduced to just two pots.  Obviously I could have chosen as many pots as I wanted, but despite half-filling another pot with sandy compost I never actually got around to sowing anymore carrot.

The Paris Market Atlas mini golfballs.  These are fun but not exactly hunger-killing carrots, especially the tiddly ones

I have not been growing carrots long, my first attempt being last year due to the aforementioned difficulty.  I can't say I was overwhelmed with carrots, with my final crop being tiny in size rather than number, but I may have got them sown a bit late in the year. My carrot of choice was Paris Market Atlas because its round like golf balls rather than the usual long root, and the packet said they were great for kids.  I find myself drawn to these kinds of things, although less so now, because I feel that seeds singled out for kids come with a higher chance of success.

This year I thought I would have another go seeing as they take so little effort, and expand into two varieties.  The second being Chantenay Red Cored 2 which again is not a big carrot, but should form delightful orange wedges.

Dirty carrots look all appealing but took me about half an hour to scrub

Sowing carrots has to be the simplest activity ever.  I merely mix shop bought compost with horticultural sand and then sprinkle the seed on top.  And then leave for about five months.  Obviously they need watering and the trick is to not disturb the carrot tops too much or you attract carrot fly, which can result in the pots being moved about the garden a fair bit If I think I have got too handsy with my plants.  I feel like the threat of carrot fly looms over every interaction I have with them.
I may have thinned the sowings a bit, but thinking back, I don't think I did, preferring instead to just let them jostle for position although this clearly isn't the way your meant to do it.

Sometime in June I had a little poke about amongst the frondy carrot tops and spotted a few orange flashes shouldering their way clear of the soil.  We had carrots! I waited and waited, keeping an eye on the protusions hoping they would get bigger but I don't remember that they did particularly, and then finally at the start of September I pulled them.

Chantenay Red Cored 2 are slightly more substantial, and I find the wedge shape particularly pleasing

Paris Market Atlas had performed better than last year, but with a clear split between sizeable golf balls and tiddlers. I don't understand why some are huge and others are tiny, it certainly made no rhyme or reason when I was pulling them up.

My prize carrot, he was perfect in every way

But the biggest success were the Chantenay Red Cored 2, which is quite some name for such a squat little carrot, including one absolutely prize specimen.  He was perfect in every way.  The rest were a decent size, producing far more actual edible vegetable than Paris, so for next year I think I would drop Paris - which is fun but not exactly overly productive - and grow a couple of pots of this one.  One carrot had grown legs, which is random as its a sure sign you have stony soil, which doesn't make sense in my perfect compost and sand mix, but there we are!

In comparison to this little freaky specimen which decided, despite perfect
soil, to grow a set of dodgy appendages 

But this may not be the end of the road for Paris.  I was flicking through a seed catalogue the other day and it said Paris was perfect for clay soils where you wouldn't dare try carrots, so maybe next year I will try a couple of rows in some of my better soil and see how we do.  Could be exciting!

My Week in Sowing 8 - Calendula, carrots, zinnia

I have so many little pots of green tendrils sprouting all over the joint that I am rapidly losing my grasp on order and descending into chaos.  I am at the point now where some pots don't look like they are going to germinate, but I am loathe to discard them as last year I did this and two cucumbers popped up in random places.  So I have pots growing, pots not growing, second batches, lists of things to sow more of, and seeds I haven't even got to yet.  Some seedlings will definitely need potting on soon and I am rapidly running out of both regular and seed compost. I really don't know what I will do if I run out of seed compost as I don't want to buy another full bag for just a few pots. Seeds are having to bunk in together to make the most of the space.  This was another busy week of sowing, including some new stuff I have never grown before.

Calendula - Sunset Buff and Sherbet Fizz. I have never grown Calendula before, but being rather daisy-esque in form these should be right up my street.  The packets were keen for the seeds to be sown where the plants are to grow and as they only wanted sowing now and I plan to grow them in pots, I have direct sown into plastic containers.  I am replacing fuchsias for calendula.  I made my usual mixture of fresh compost and old soil from emptied pots mixed with regular garden soil.  I find this dries out less fast than just compost on its own.  Calendula seeds are really interestingly shaped, like little gnarled horns or tusks, all small and curly.  While the seeds for sunset buff were mainly brown, sherbet fizz ranged from red to green.  I buried ten seeds in each pot, a quarter inch beneath the soil.  These will just sit on my patio to germinate.

Zinnia - Red Spider.  I am becoming increasingly fond of zinnias.  While they require a whole little pot to themselves, they do at least come through nice and fast.  The ones I sowed last week are already making an appearance, so the production line is pretty speedy, freeing up space for the next batch.  I have never grown this variety of zinnia before but it looked a bit different with less petals so I thought, why not!

One of last year's zinnia flowers, not the one I sowed this week

Carrot - Paris Market Atlas. This is last year's carrot variety, I have sown two because everybody likes a little variation in their carrot supply.  These are gloriously small and round and are aimed at kids, but being a big one myself these rather appeal.  I have not got the soil for carrots so these are sown in a little mixture I created myself - compost, garden soil and several trowel-fulls of sand to open up the mixture and give the free draining quality the carrots enjoy so much. I plan to sow several more pots to ensure a good stock, now that I have endless empty pots to fill.

Part of last year's paris market atlas crop.  Wouldn't feed the five thousand but a tasty morsel none the less

Sunflowers - Sunburst mixed.  Unlike the other variety I sowed, velvet queen, both my sunburst mixed seeds have been woefully disappointing.  One came up, and then thought better of it and died, while the other did not even bother doing that, and finally I have given up on him.  I sowed another two seeds in a single pot of seed compost (a little soil saving technique I am now employing) so hopefully these will have more oomph.  I need to do a post on my other sunflowers as they are going great guns and will need planting out soon!

My week in sowing 4 - Peas, carrots and peppers

Home grown produce, can't wait!

This week for me has been all about the vegetables.  My garage windowsill is still stuffed and nothing shows any sign of wishing to move out any time soon, so this week I again am focussing on more hardy souls, like peas.

Sugar Snap Peas - Jessy.  I didn't sow my own sugar snaps last year, I cheated and bought them from the garden centre.  This did not turn out as well as you might have imagined.  The peas are sowed commercially more than one to a cell, and I didn't get them planted out quick enough so by the time I did I couldn't get them separated.  I was pretty brutal with them, but in the end had to plant them in clusters. This did not aid picking as I couldn't see the things amongst the thicket of vines.  This year Im doing it myself.  Im going to have a lot less plants to work with, but they will hopefully not be such an unruly bunch.  Currently I have sown 15 peas, but I might do a second crop to keep the peas rolling in during the summer.  I think peas are fairly unfussy, so I sowed them in normal compost in one of my segmented plastic trays.  They like to go in two inches deep, but the cells are not much deeper, so they have to make do with an inch and a half.

Pea - Kelvedon Wonder. I did grow these last year, and they were a roaring success; big, juicy, succulant.  Or at least the slugs thought so.  They dived in promptly the moment the leaves had appeared.  I saved most of them, but this year I will be on it right from the start.  Being only a different type of pea I sowed them in exactly the same way as the sugar snaps.  Both are outside braving it, protected by some fleece at night.

Small and perfectly formed, Bugs Bunny would be proud.  Ok maybe I wouldn't mind them a tad bigger

Carrot - Chanteray Red Cored 2.  I loved growing carrots last year, can't remember exactly eating a huge amount, but thats hardly the point!  Its all about the growing in my book, especially as carrots take so little effort.  I do not have the right soil for carrots, they like it sandy I believe, and thats the last thing I have.  Thick and heavy solid clay is all my garden beds can provide.  Therefore I grow carrots in pots.     I mix some fresh compost with some old compost garden soil mix, with a good couple of trowel-fulls of sand.  The good thing about stocking up on garden essentials last year, such a great big old bag of horticultural sand, means that when you get up one morning and decide to sow carrots, you don't first have to make a trip to the local garden centre.  Hopefully my little orange friends will enjoy my soil recipe.  The seeds are just sprinkled on the top of the soil, et voila! C'est fini.  Leave till summer.

I know I thought my compost was poor last year, but looking back its terrible!  Seems to be mainly composed of wood rather than soil.  None of these seedlings survived the great slug outbreak of 2014

Pepper - Sweet minimix and sweet topepo rosso.  Ah the peppers.  We had a tumultuous time, my peppers and I, last year.  I sowed them, they grew, I had a beautiful tray of seedlings, and then a slug invited itself to dinner.  One, just one little seedling was left after that first feast, and then he snuck back and polished that one as well.  So my peppers were exclusively provided by shop bought plants.  Weirdly, my all time most read post is one in which I admit that I neglected to eat most of the peppers I grew last year.  Despite being popular, I plan to not repeat this post again this year.  As the seeds are from last year I didn't stint.  I sowed ten-ish seeds in two pots, one variety in each.  They are currently snug on my kitchen windowsill, but they will have to elbow themselves some room the moment the pop up.  Seed compost, quarter of an inch deep, if your interested.

Who named this plant?! How can such as thing of beauty be called a toad lily? So spotty

Tricyrtis - hirta. Ok so its not all vegetables.  This is another new seed purchase.  Shouldn't have admitted that, the other half will not be happy! I bought these at Kew Gardens because I saw these at a garden I visited last year and was completely entranced by them.  Getting hold of one myself has been a different matter.  I have not been able to get my hands on this elusive seed anywhere, so when I saw it in Kew, it was clearly going to be mine.  These are a lily-type of flower, which hopefully means they will not be poisonous to my cat.  Their common name is the toad lily, which I love.  What an unattractive  name for a lovely flower.

Sweet Peas - Yes more sweet peas, remember I wish to hand them out in the street to strangers in the summer.  I actually sowed these last week but I forgot.  I sowed one of each of the varieties I sowed originally.  They have the challenge of germinating outside which none of my sweet peas so far have had to do.  I can't promise this will be my last batch.

Carrots Paris Market Atlas

Get ready for lots of orange and green, carrots are just so distinctively coloured.

I think when I decided to grow carrots I was mainly taken in by the packaging for these seeds.  Not because cartoon carrots with smiley faces appeal to me but for the fact they are aimed at kids, for surely anything aimed at a child is a guaranteed grow for an adult no?  Thats my theory anyway.  This was at a time when I was having very little success with my seeds and needed a little sprouting pick-me-up.
Having clay soil, my only option were pots so having turfed out a couple of Fuchsias I filled with compost and sprinkled seed across the top, job done.  I hate this compost, its one specially designed to hold more water but as far as I can tell its just full of weed.

A carrot variety for kids, and me it turns out.

Germination was quick and even, as far as I remember, a covering of feathery green tops across the surface within a couple of weeks.  The packet instructed the grower to 'thin' the carrots by pulling out ones growing too near each other, but rather than just follow the packets advice I as usual consulted the mother who told me to do something completely different.  No no, she cried, wait for them to grow a bit and then you can eat the thin-ings when you pull them out.

So over the next couple of months I pulled out the occasional carrot to check on progress but all were effectively tiny orange coloured roots.  Then of course I had to move both pots to avoid carrot fly.  And so it continued; check and move, check and move etc.  Then finally at the end of August, one decent orange beauty!  Finally, all plump and round (Paris Market Atlas are round ball-shaped carrots.  As previously stated, round appeals greatly to me).  But still disappointingly tiny.
Finally after several months I just couldn't take it anymore and pulled up a whole bunch to thin.  Despite going for the biggest, most green and luscious tops the resulting carrots could only be described as aperitifs at best rather than a full accompaniment.  I still found it exciting, but then Im easily pleased.

The first proper carrot, a true tiny beauty but I think Bugs Bunny would be disappointed. 

But it turns out, carrots do come to those who wait.  Upon an occasional inspection of my pots I spotted a few orange carrot shoulders breaking through the soil, so of course they had to come out.  I tried to pull up only the very biggest, which at best is cherry tomato sized, but I got a nice little crop.  Weirdly one pot yielded significantly larger produce than the other despite being grown in exactly the same conditions.  We had a scant meal with these, other food was required of course to pad it out.  I left some in situ in the hope they might fatten, eventually pulling them out only marginally larger for fear the worms might get them.

The first crop, small but perfectly formed.

I will definitely be growing carrots again next year, not that they exactly had much of an impact on my diet, but they are fun to grow.  In being sub-terraneous, growing hidden away from sight there is an element of lucky dip in occasionally pulling one out to see what you get.  Funs good enough for me, especially as they are absolutely no effort, other than the regular pot shifting to avoid fly obviously.  Its like lucky dip and an arm workout combined, win win all round.

The carrots in the outer ring are twice the size of those in the ring for no apparent reason at all.