Living Healthy | Sisters Are Making It For Themselves

intermittent posts on sewing, knitting, gardening, healthy eating and other random topics from two sisters

Archive for the ‘Living Healthy’ Category

I had to murder my carrot seedlings today.

It was so sad, sob sob. They were so hopeful and proud in the ground, and growing so well, see?

However, they are much too close together. I am mystified as to why every garden resource I have access to said to plant them 1/2 inch apart and then thin to 2 inches. Why not just plant fewer? Is the germination rate that low? Based on the mass of carrots you see here, clearly it is not.

Given their close spacing, it was a nightmare thinning all of these. Putting aside my emotions about chopping down all my baby seedlings aside, it was tough to get in there with the scissors and thin out the ill-fated seedlings while leaving the other ones standing. It was also hard to make sure I thinned out the weak ones while leaving the sturdy ones to go on living and feed us carrots. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, moving carrots to the top of this weeks “things I thought would be easy but weren’t” list.

Lessons learned on sowing and thinning carrots:

– carrots don’t really need to be broadcast or sown at 1/2 inch spacing. Our plan for next year is to put a couple of seeds in each hole, and keep the holes 2 inches apart.

– don’t wait until they are really big to thin them. These should have been thinned two weeks ago, which would have made it easier as they wouldn’t have been so grown over each other

– plant more of them! after thinning, we are going to have like, 3 days worth of carrots. It’s a lot of work to go through for so few carrots. (and if you count the cost of my labor, these will be the most expensive carrots we’ve ever eaten)

It wasn’t a total loss though! Carrot greens are not only edible, they are delicious. They taste a little bit like sweet parsley. I saved the thinned out greens (not even half of them are pictured in the bowl below) and used them to make a delicious green smoothie! (if you haven’t tried green smoothies, please do yourself a favor and try them!) In fact, carrot greens are so delicious I’m now contemplating growing them for the greens.