C is for Carrot!

I was watering the garden last week, thinking about how to tell when root vegetables are ready to be harvested. I had just come to the conclusion that I probably should research this question on the web when the water from my hose showed me the orange top of one of my carrots.

With trepidation I grasped the carrot top and pulled.... and out popped our first carrot! Since then I've gotten a little more daring, and I've learned a valuable lesson: plant the carrots farther apart. I just sewed a few more carrot seeds with that lesson in mind. In the pictures you'll see a carrot that was planted far enough away from its fellow carrots, and a bunch of carrots that were planted too close. It's like a mutant carrot monster... Still tasted good though!

Tomatoes are getting so big, but when will they ripen?

Climb beanstalk, climb!

I love carrots whole bunches.

A proper looking carrot.

Mutant carrots. Call Professor X!

An Intriguing Development

About a week ago, Brandon and I spread our homemade (or should I say worm-made?) compost throughout the garden. The plants responded quickly and voraciously, and what with the warmer summer days and the new food, we had a lot of stunning growth. 

Then I started noticing little sprouts... all over the garden. But specifically right near the base of each plant, where we'd spread the compost. I suspect that there must have been seeds of some sort in the compost, though I have no idea from what. There's part of me that wouldn't mind letting a few of the sprouts keep growing to see what they turn into! I'm not in the practice of putting seeds into my compost box, so it had to be from old strawberries or tomatoes... something where the seeds are small. The kind of seeds I assumed my worms would eat. Well, now I know better!

The other development of the last week is that my salad greens have gone bitter. As they get old, the flavor changes pretty drastically. We decided it was time for a fresh sweep, so we now have baby lettuce in place of the old, gone to seed, lettuce. This time we'll start eating it sooner. The first time around I didn't realize how quickly the lettuce would grow new leaves and it was hard to keep up with so much growth. This time we'll start eating salads earlier and hopefully we'll get to enjoy more out of those plants' lifetimes. Adding to our earlier salad mix, we now have an Italian blend, and an heirloom blend. Should be delicious. 

Here comes a cantaloupe blossom!

Zucchini is just a few weeks away.

The old lettuce was getting out of hand. Notice the really tall green leaf lettuce right next to the tomato plants. Needless to say, the leaves were no longer sweet tasting.

After planting our new lettuce blend. It's hard to believe that the first batch was just as small when we planted them just a few months ago.

Hang on, little tomato!