Ehh, What's Up Doc?

Carrots!  Oh My!  And Turnips!  And bits of winter this and that.  Most of the winter crops are gone.  Eaten, frozen or fed to the worms.  The summer crop is all in.   More on that a bit later.

The deer flies have arrived.  It is officially hot, and I'm itching and pissy.  It's time for indoor activities. 

I know!  Let's plan for fall!  And how to get more carrots.  More on that later also. <grin>

Those carrots grew in the shade.  Yeppers, shade.  These carrots and the the long ago eaten radish were the very first [edible] plants I started from seed.  Ahhhhhh, how sweet.

The current Mother Earth mag has a brief section on growing in the shade.  Some of the tips include:  save your precious full sun spots for plants that must have full sun, plant greenhouse varieties that are more adapted to less sun and create mini gardens wherever you can find a spot with some sun.

Mother didn't say to put big pots on big wheels so that you can roll them around and follow the sun.  Though she should have.  Or, go buy a heavy duty hand truck.  Because my go-to fold up is not quite up to a big full pot.

Mother Earth News Veggies in the Shade article

Mother Earth's list of shade tolerant veggies - what is nice about this chart, as compared to others I've found is that it tells how much sun.  And they say about root crops:

"Beets, carrots, potatoes, radishes and turnips will do OK in partial shade, but you'll have to wait longer for a full crop."

Guess that would be why the 80 day carrots took 8 months.  Well, and maybe me being a noob veggie gardener had something to do with it.  And no, I didn't weigh them.  Hubs says to me, we have a bathroom scale, what do you need a kitchen scale for?  Grumble .....

In December, when I figured out I had carrots growing underground, I put out more seed.  There is another crop of very baby carrots out there that I didn't pull.  It's not yet rotting in the ground season, so maybe they will grow just an bit more.  Then I'll work on amending the bejebbers out of that area to get us ready for fall.

Based on the reviews of one of the GW'ers, I planted some Asian Carrots out back.  New Kuroda, they were planted in late March and I even put a squirrel shield over them.  They have not sprouted.  All that said, I will try them again, just in another spot.  That spot out back is probably too much shade, what with the tomato jungle over them and all.

This spring, I planted cucumbers and tomatoes all over the place.  Some in pretty unusual spots.  Mini garden experimentation.  How else will I learn what can go where????  So I have learned that cucumbers do very well in partial shade.  In fact, even in pretty deep'ish shade.  Hey Barb!  Time to try some of those greenhouse cucumbers in your screen room!

This past week, we ate our first Hybrid Tropic Boy tomato.  I was anxiously awaiting this to ripen.  Couldn't wait to taste it.  OMG, what if it grows great but taste horrible???  Well, we think it tasted just good.  We are growing it again.  It might not be so good to a tomato grower connoisseur, but to us it is heavenly.  It is everything a new SE Tomato grower needs, easy to grow, vigorous, heavy producer and good eats.

There is one of the Tropic Boy plants we have growing.  It is in a 4 gallon pot sitting on concrete in part sun.  

We made a relish with the last of the odds and ends I picked.  Carrots, corn, peas, turnips, kohlrabi.  I also picked a bunch of green onions.  We added tomatoes, sweet peppers and just one of these hot peppers.  See that one yellow pepper?  Gosh, all mighty it was HOT.  I can't imagine what it will be when they turn red.  Anyway, it is a fun, edible addition to our garden.  And it's job is to keep the squirrels away from our okra and tomatoes, and so far it is working out.  Well, the combination of hot peppers, marigolds and society garlic. 

The relish was good.  Hot, but good.  We served it on top a bowl of beans.  The leftover relish, which will probably be even hotter now, will go with a pork roast and the last of the kohlrabi tomorrow.

Hubs just told me that the stock I made for cooking the beans was delightful and could I please make more.  Well, just so happens there are still brassica leaves in the garden.  Add a little bit of pepper, some damaged green tomatoes, handful of green onion, and a forkful of homemade kimchi and simmer for 2 days in the baby crock pot.  Towards the end of cooking time, toss in some garden herbs.   I think I'll make some more and let it cook down super condensed then freeze them.

It's purple week at Daphne's.  Wonder if she would like some really hot but pretty purple hot peppers???  Drop on by and visit all the folks for Harvest Monday.