Carrots

The weather is finally becoming more fall like and the only things I have left in the garden are Carrots and Dahlias.  It will still be a few more weeks before I will dig the Dahlias.  

The carrots have done exceptionally well this year.  They germinated well in the mild April weather and then thrived in the cool wet May.  I planted four varieties in containers and one variety in seed tape along the back of the strawberry cages where I previously had Parsnips.  With my shallow raised beds I have to choose my Carrot locations carefully.  They need deep, loose soil to grow long and straight.  I have been growing them in containers with potting mix for quite a few years now and get very good results.  But it was kind of nice to have some growing in the ground because the containers require dedicated watering.

I pulled Carrots from containers all summer to use in salads.  When the foliage started getting a little rough looking, as it does every August, I just cut it all back to about two inches to see what would happen.  It came back fresh and green and one container has started putting out flowers.  I've never had this happen and assume this is because I cut the foliage back and tricked the plant into thinking that it was the second year.

Nantes and/or Sugarsnax flowering like Queen Anne's Lace

These carrots had become next to impossible to pull one by one because they were so rooted in.  I dumped one container and was curious to see what the overall root systems looked like.  They had pretty much taken up the entire pot.  

That's a pretty strong secondary root situation!

I started breaking the soil away from the side and the carrots came out easily.

Rotild on the left and King Midas on the right

I cut the foliage off and rinsed the worst of the soil off and put them all in a plastic bag in the hydrator.  The less you handle them the longer they keep well.  I will probably end up cutting these, blanching and freezing them.  

The Carrot tape did very well despite infrequent watering.  The soil is pretty good here, but they are still pushing themselves up out of the ground.  The variety is YaYa, which is a sweet, Nantes type. I like the Nantes Carrots because of their blunt ends.

  I feel somehow that there is less waste if I know where to trim the root as opposed to a tapered "Imperator" type Carrot where you have to decide just how much of the root is useable.  But I still plant those too because I love pulling a long, slender Carrot.

Last year's Sugarsnax Carrots

The great thing about Carrots is that they get sweeter in cold weather.  I cannot leave them in containers over winter because they will freeze solid and turn to mush, but the Yaya Carrots in the ground can be left for quite awhile.  If I were to cover them deeply with straw or leaves to insulate the ground I might be digging them in the middle of winter and adding fresh, sweet carrots to my Crockpot meals.

The Weather is Changing

 For the past seven weeks at least we have had perfect warm, dry, sunny weather except for two rainy days and a couple of random showers.  It is going to be difficult to adjust to anything else.  Today is 82F and sunny and the overnight low is a moderate 59F.  Tomorrow is supposed to be area wide rain with accumulation of half an inch.  Then, the next two days will be cool and sunny and I'll bet we get frost advisories.  Our average first frost date is Oct 7th so this is right on schedule.

This means that today was the last day to deal with anything I want to be dry and frost free.  First order of business was to transplant all of my Coleus cuttings to see if I need to save any more from frost.  Some plants will withstand cool nights but Coleus is not one of them. 

The camera focus was a little off kilter but you can see that when I pulled these cuttings they had enough roots to bring undisturbed soil with them.  Perfect.  I ended up with a tray of 18 with a couple of spares set aside.

I was also experimenting with Marigold cuttings.  I am not going to try over wintering something as easy to start from seeds as Marigolds, but it is good to know that if I run short in the spring I can pinch my seedlings back, root the pinchings and double my inventory.  

Three of these had excellent roots and the rest had nearly none.  I transplanted the rooted ones for now in the interest of experimentation but I won't put too much time into them

Sweet Potatoes will spoil after the vines are killed by frost.  I got one grow bag dumped but then got distracted before I got to the second one.  Each of the five plants had one nice main tuber suitable for baking if I want.

I dumped the rest of the soil through a sifter and found some midsized ones that will work for frying.   All of these came from my own starts from last year's crop.

The Celosia won't survive the rain and frost.  We have had around three inches of rain over the last two months and I have not watered these even once.

These are on the third year of reseeding themselves.  As I was knocking the roots around to shake off the soil, I could feel the seeds raining down on my feet.  No wonder they reseed so well.  I have to add soil to this planter which will cover most of the seeds too deeply.  I plan to buy a packet of seeds and direct sow them in the spring.  Hopefully I can get a better mix of yellow and orange because the red has taken over.

Some of these Marigolds have already burned in the cool nights.  Not exactly frost, but not happy.  Again, we're really dry and they have been on their own.

They don't look bad today. but they are nicer to pull now that they will be after rain and frost.

This planter of five Coleus has done so well.  You can see that they are faded and dropping leaves.  That isn't because of lack of water.  I have watered them all along.  It is the cool nights (we had low 40s the second half of August) that has made them unhappy. So out they go.

That leaves me with Dahlias, which need a frost to cue them into dormancy, carrots which are sweeter after a frost and one grow bag of Sweet Potatoes.  I also have my ornamental pepper plants that I will bring indoors on the cold nights and otherwise let them try for as long as they can.

Then its Leaf Season....

A Sinking Feeling

 Back in May we cleaned out two old Whiskey Barrel planters and replaced them with poly resin containers that look like terracotta.  I promise they look more like real terracotta from the side.  They look pretty cheesy and orange on the inside.  Anyway... look how much the soil has sunk.  I need to add at least four inches of soil, maybe six inches.  But I am waiting for spring.  The Hostas are rooted in and growing well.  I don't want to disturb them going into winter.  I will cut them back and add a layer of shredded leaves on top to insulate them.  This Hosta variety is supposedly hardy to temperatures down to -30F.  When planting perennials in containers you should choose varieties hardy two zones lower than your own and we are currently a zone 6b.

We had volunteer Petunias in them all summer.  Next year I will plant colorful annuals in them and use the Hosta for centerpiece plant.