Carrot Week 2013

Leaving the beach and heading home tomorrow..... ready and eager to get my seeds in the ground as soon as I arrive.

RoOsTeR wrote:

What penalties will the Carrot Police enforce?

Penalties will be waived if you plant colorful carrots

I may not always be timely, but I can almost always promise to be 'colorful'!

GG

Rainbow, Cosmic purple, Touchon, and Scarlet Nantes

GG - Join me in planting in a bucket!

The snow has not let up here either but I have a packet of Burpee Kaleidoscope Mix and plan to plant even if I need to keep my "portable garden" in the garage for a bit. A winter storm watch is already called for Sunday. Here's the garden this morning, and it's still coming down tonight!

Goosegirl wrote:

I spoke too soon!

Earlier this week almost all snow was gone - grass was greening up, and some trees were even starting to have buds. Yesterday brought 8" of wet, sloppy snow. Tomorrow night is forecast for another 3-5" snow. Sunday, freezing rain and snow. And so on, and so forth, for the rest of the week. I may have to make a 'late entry' for Carrot Week. What penalties will the Carrot Police enforce?

GG

+1

darci.strutt wrote:GG - Join me in planting in a bucket!

The snow has not let up here either but I have a packet of Burpee Kaleidoscope Mix and plan to plant even if I need to keep my "portable garden" in the garage for a bit. A winter storm watch is already called for Sunday. Here's the garden this morning, and it's still coming down tonight!

I am going to get what I need for filling a bucket with MM this afternoon. Our winter storm watch for this evening has been changed to an Ice Storm Warning! Rainbow Mix Bucket coming up!

Turan - Join us in the Bucket Brigade if you can!



GG

I also use a portable carrot box for Carrot Week. Our weather is just to whacky this time of year to be trusted. I can move my box indoors if need be.
These are last years Carrot Week carrots:

My regular carrots I will plant a bit later once the weather is more stable and then another later planting for fall

It looks like I'l have to run with the bucket'O' carrots as well it's so wet and cold outside even the pickpockets have got their hands in their own pockets.

plantoid wrote:it's so wet and cold outside even the pickpockets have got their hands in their own pockets.

HAHA! Good one!

So I'm reading this thread with no intention of going out in that gale out there to plant carrots, but...you know how it goes...I read about gardening and I get bit. Soooo...I dawned my winter coat, put my motorcycle goggles over my reading glasses to keep the wind out, grabbed my seed packet & camera, and off I went. My cat wouldn't even come out with me.

I had to make holes to put the seeds in or they would have blown away. I put them in 36/sq with hopes of having baby carrots to eat when thinning:


They are funny looking seeds...one kind even looks like they have legs:


All planted into their new home with the other carrots that were planted last week, and watered with rain water. I hope they don't mind their garlicky neighbors:

I just realized...the garlic will be shading the carrots! :scratch: When do we harvest garlic?

CC

we are soaking our circus carrot seeds to plant this weekend for carrot week!





happy gardening
rose

FamilyGardening wrote:we are soaking our circus carrot seeds to plant this weekend for carrot week!

rose

We're supposed to soak them? Too late now...
Maybe that's why I had such a cruddy harvest last year.

CC

I didn't know you had to soak carrot seeds. Have you done this before? How long do you soak?

As to the blistering winter that won't go away...I've been collecting toilet paper tubes for a month (& asking my friends to do the same for me), so I'll be sowing in tubes since there's no way I'll be able to get anything in the ground.

CapeGoddess, from the size of your garlic sprouts, looks like you may be harvesting them before the 4th of July. Keep a lookout for when the lower leaves start to brown. When half have browned, pull one garlic and check for full development. If outside papery cover has begun to split, yank 'em all quick! If cloves are just well covered by the outside cover, you can harvest them over a week's time--just watch for the browned lower leaves. Carrots usually grow somewhat slow, so I doubt they'll mind the stripey shadows the garlic will cast part of the day.

And, I'm with y'all: Today I planted a square each of: Purple Haze Hybrid; Mokum (nantes) Hybrid; White Satin Hybrid; and Atomic Red OP. Nonna

Nonna, thanks so much for the very helpful tips! I'll keep in eye on them.
Did you soak your carrot seeds?

CC

I am officially in!! Felt good to get some dirt through my hands. Thank you for carrot week!!

Hopefully they'll stay warm enough in the porch. It gets some sun, but I'll move them out to the deck once the snow and sleet moves out. My bucket was 9x12 inches so I planted 12 carrots. This is yet another experiement you folk have encouraged me to try

Just this afternoon I was given a 1'x2' self-watering planter! I can now plant 2 squares of carrots indoors in the box on Monday!



GG

Arrived home from vacation and after unloading the car, the first thing I did was run out to inspect the gardens and plant my carrots as required.

Amazing how much changed in the garden over the course of one week while I was absent. I am happy to report that all of the change was for the good thanks to my next door neighbor keeping an eye on things while we were away.

I am planting my Carnival Blend carrots along with the other types either Sunday or Monday.

CapeCoddess wrote:

FamilyGardening wrote:we are soaking our circus carrot seeds to plant this weekend for carrot week!

rose

We're supposed to soak them? Too late now...
Maybe that's why I had such a cruddy harvest last year.

CC

you do not have to soak carrot seeds before planting....

even though we are in the PNW with lots of rain....we have had trouble getting our carrots to germinate for some reason....or they go *poof* after taking forever to sprout....something comes along and eats them we planted several squares last year and had 0% to harvest for carrot week.....

so last year for our fall planting of carrots we soaked them after someone else suggested and gave it a try and they germinated a lot faster for us...so we are trying it again this year for carrot week.... ...the other carrots we planted 4-6 weeks ago we did not soak....and they are just now coming up....

happy gardening
rose

Rose, Inquiring minds want to know: Do you use tweezers to plant the tiny wet seeds? Or, as a friend used to say: "How dey do dat?" BTW, last fall I planted some overwintering carrots, which we are just now starting to pull to eat--they're totally delicious! After this small success, I shall triple the planting of overwintering carrots! (this past winter was our first attempt at full-sail winter gardening) Nonna

I planted Touchon heirlooms....


a month and a half ago.


Oops.


And all the rest of my spaces are already planted with other things...but I promise to plant Dragon heirlooms later (much later!) in the year for a fall/winter crop!

Something for you to look forward to.
These were my unexpected January harvest. We just finished eating this batch on Friday. They were awesomely tasty.

People on here just inspire me to look things up:

Turan wrote:
[snip] The thickest carrots I know of are Oxheart. That is an old breed and I have not seen the seed in a long time.

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7l2WSmlRzlEAl75XNyoA?ei=UTF-8&fr=crmas&p=oxheart+carrot+seed&rs=0&fr2=rs-top and in that, I found: http://myfolia.com/retailers/2418-hirts-gardens/catalogue_items/27832-organic-oxheart-carrot

Then, when

Windsor.Parker wrote:Hey Admin! WP here!
Glad to join in, again!
....This time I'll be planting "Atomic Red", Shin Koruda, and Nantes.

I wondered what Shin Koruda was, found out, and now I wonder where you got your seeds, because Victory Seeds is looking for customers' pictures:
http://www.victoryseeds.com/carrot_shin-kuroda.html

Meanwhile, I asked my boyfriend to see if he saw multicolored carrots one day when he was going to one of the big box stores, and he brought me home the same seeds as Pepper's: Cooks Garden, Kaleidoscope Mix. But then he planted some in his own garden, so I kept an eye out for another pack. I found the same as Hoggar posted, Botanical Interests' Carnival Blend, at a health food store. With any luck, tomorrow I can find some wood for a high rise (top hat) box, and get my seeds in on the official 1st day of Carrot Week! (And if not, I'm not gonna panic; it is Carrot Week, after all. )

Nicola we planted some Koruda carrots a few weeks ago this is what we bought....



happy gardening
rose