Carrot Week 2012!

I did 23 squares of carrots

.
For Carrot Week? WoW

RoOsTeR wrote:

I did 23 squares of carrots

.
For Carrot Week? WoW

WOw! I did 8 squares, that will put a few pounds in the freezer. What are you going to do with all those carrots? I am assuming they grew.

We use carrots in several fall/winter dishes...pot roast, chicken noodles, vegetable soup, etc. I had the equivalent of approx 96 open squares for fall planting...decided to do beets, carrots, lettuce, and spinach. Pole beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes are in remaining squares and still doing o.k.

Neighbors love the carrots as well...I guess the neighbor boy (4 years old) commented to his parents that he wants a SFG next year...I decided they could just use a bit of mine instead...he planted some spinach seeds in a few squares and it's coming up too. My SFG is in the front yard...all the neighbors see it every day from their cars, bikes, jogging, walking pets, etc...it's awesome.

I finally picked some of my Carrot Week carrots today. I've got a stew in the slow cooker for dinner and the recipe said to use baby carrots and I thought, "I've got some of those!"



And they sure were baby carrots, as you can see the longest one was not even the length of my hand and they shrunk from there.

The ones where I left a few seedlings together in the hopes of some funky carrots had just moved apart as they grew and were boring normal ones. Might have to rethink that technique if there's another carrot challenge next year!

congrats on your cute carrots Erica!.....nothing beats fresh from the garden to the table.....you didnt have to run to the store to get your carrots....they were waiting for you in your garden

hugs
rose

Sure were, so were the leeks and chives that also went into dinner!

Just about to find out how it tastes...


There are still a few more Carrot Week carrots in the square so we'll see if they get any bigger.

Well they didn't get much bigger, I finally picked the last of my Carrot Week carrots about a week ago and they were all pretty small. Tasted good though!

We ate the last of our carrot week carrots tonight with braized steak , we're due to start on those sown two weeks later on at tomorrow's evening meal .

Here are my recently pulled carrot week carrots. April 15 was too warm for planting carrots in Georgia but I planted them anyway. They germinated real fast and sprouted up to about 4 inches and stayed that way all summer. I got tired of waiting for them to grow so I removed a few in the center of the squares and planted one okra in each square. The ants found the okra and were all over it and seemed to be eating on the actual okra fruit (no aphids though). I tired to kill the ants. Unfortunetly one of the many things I tried was Spectricide granuales (I know bad, bad). I forgot about the fact that it would probably poison me if I ate the carrots. Sooooo they are all going in the compost pile.

OOOOOpppsss. I forgot the picture of the carrots, here it is.

Yolos ,
Can you see all the knobbley growth rings and the split carrots in your crop .. that's usually caused by erratic watering .

Like most root crops long slow even growing conditions with consistant moisture all the way to the root tip give best results.

Plantoid, thanks for the suggestion about watering. This year they were growing in the herb box but next year they will be in a box with either drip irrigation or soaker hoses set on timers. That should take care of the irregular watering next year.

One thing that seems true here in the UK is that when the MM is at a certain level of high moisture the ants don't invade , in the drier front garden areas where the MM is fairly dry ( not auto watered ) the ants play with joy .

yolos wrote:...snip...
Unfortunetly one of the many things I tried was Spectricide granuales (I know bad, bad). I forgot about the fact that it would probably poison me if I ate the carrots. Sooooo they are all going in the compost pile.

Yolos, I don't know how long that poison stays around, so would just chucking the whole lot (and any MM that could be contaminated) into the garbage be a safer alternative?

Mollyhespera - yes I am going to remove the MM and put it in some flower gardens that are in sad shape. I did compost the carrots and carrot tops. The amount of crap that may have been absorbed by the carrots should be negligible when added to a 4x4x4 compost heap. It will be at least one year before I use the compost in this pile.

mollyhespra wrote:

yolos wrote:...snip...
Unfortunetly one of the many things I tried was Spectricide granuales (I know bad, bad). I forgot about the fact that it would probably poison me if I ate the carrots. Sooooo they are all going in the compost pile.

Yolos, I don't know how long that poison stays around, so would just chucking the whole lot (and any MM that could be contaminated) into the garbage be a safer alternative?

I tryed to track down how long it takes to degrade in the enviroment. I am assuming Spectracide Triazide granules were used. The active ingrediant is supposedly lambda-cyhalothrin.

What happens to lambda-cyhalothrin in the environment?
$ In laboratory studies, alkaline water degraded lambda-cyhalothrin with an approximate half-life of 7 days. Neutral and acidic water did not degrade the chemical. See box on Half-life.
$ Sunlight breaks down lambda-cyhalothrin in water and soil (2).
$ The half-life of lambda-cyhalothrin on plant surfaces is 5 days (10).

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/l_cyhalogen.pdf

That suggests the MM should be ok to grow in next year. Surely throwing hte MM into the compost would be even better. Just in case.

Can you double check the label? Did I find the right chemical?

Thank you so much Turan. I will look for the bag of Spectricide tomorrow (if I don't forget). I put it on the garden in 8 squares in August so the MM is probably okay to use now. But just to be on the safe side, I will probably remove it. I have a 3 year old grandson so I am trying to grow organically, but I just got so mad at the ants I lost my head.

PS. The spectricide did not work. I finally used corn syrup and Boric acid and that worked. Or I tried so many different things, one of them finally worked but who knows what actually got rid of the ants.

Turan wrote:...snip...

I tryed to track down how long it takes to degrade in the enviroment. I am assuming Spectracide Triazide granules were used. The active ingrediant is supposedly lambda-cyhalothrin.

What happens to lambda-cyhalothrin in the environment?
$ In laboratory studies, alkaline water degraded lambda-cyhalothrin with an approximate half-life of 7 days. Neutral and acidic water did not degrade the chemical. See box on Half-life.
$ Sunlight breaks down lambda-cyhalothrin in water and soil (2).
$ The half-life of lambda-cyhalothrin on plant surfaces is 5 days (10).

http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/l_cyhalogen.pdf

That suggests the MM should be ok to grow in next year. Surely throwing hte MM into the compost would be even better. Just in case.

Can you double check the label? Did I find the right chemical?

I just did a quick google check on the pH of the rain down Yolos' way in Georgia and it seems that her rain is on the acidic end, which means that rain water itself will not break down that stuff.

Similarly, for the sun to break it down, the sun needs to reach it, which means that anything buried inside a compost pile won't get broken down. I imagine that explains why anything on the plant itself gets degraded by half every 5 days (but that doesn't mean it's gone in 5 days, only half of it is).

I dunno--but the way I read it, Turan, that info makes me even more concerned about putting anything into the compost pile--it's more like she should spread it all out thinly on a tarp and let the sunshine do it's thang. Did you find anything about whether heat has any effect?

Okay, I just looked at the bag and also read the MSDS from Spectracide. The bag says it is Spectacide Triazicide Insect Killer Once and Done Granules. The bag lists the ingredients as Gamma-Cyhalothrin .05%, other ingredients 99.95%. The MSDS sheet does mention Lambda-Cyhalothrin and not Gamma-Cyhalothrin.

I definetly do not intend to put the MM in my compost pile. I have many flower/shrub areas that I can put the MM. I did put the carrots in the compost pile but the amount of spectracide that was on the carrots must be negligible. I only put about a tablespoon of the stuff at the base of each okra plant (one tablespoon in each square). I did not mix it into the soil but the rain probably made it soak into the soil.

But if light or heat will make it degrade, I can put the mix on a plastic sheet and let it sit in the sun for a month or two before I will need those squares. And then not plant any root crops in that box for a year or so.

I'm with you on not putting the MM it in the compost pile, Yolos.

I don't know if heat does anything to degrade that chemical, BTW. I didn't read Turan's reference/link, only what was quoted in the post, which is why I thought spreading the MM out on a tarp in the sunlight might help.

Baking soda is on the alkaline end of things, so maybe dissolving some (but how much?) into water & use that to drench the soil in those squares might help further degrade the poison, but now we're starting to get complicated & I'm sure you don't want to make things worse by trying to help.

I wish I could be of more use except to wish you good luck (& suggest you chuck out whatever is left of that Spectracide to avoid temptation next time you have ants in your garden)!

Composting is my knee jerk reaction to all that ails a garden. All the microbes etc seem to do magic. But I know they can not degrade the herbicides fast enough, so I should not feel they would be able to handle the inscecticide.

Photosynthis seems the most talked about factor of degrading it. Which would happen with time and turning the MM frequently. Like a tarp......

But still..... if I felt it had been sunned enough etc I would toss it in the compost pile for a run through that way and dilution.

+2

I was just looking at picture messages on my cell, and I found one that I was supposed to post back in October, after I picked the last of the "forgotten Carrot Week 2012" carrots.
(Next year I need to study -earlier- how to grow the roots, not the greens.)