I Can Grow Carrots!

And they're SO delicious!

As you can see by the variety of sizes, I can't thin carrots, but one step at a time eh?

I was disappointed to find a couple had carrot-fly holes in them, and several more had little white eggs round the tops. This is from a row planted amongst nine rows of onions, leeks and shallots! This companion-planting lark seems a bit hit and miss to me. Ah well. Won't stop me trying...

Thank you for all your kind words, encouragement and advice after the last post - I knew I could count on you guys : )


You'll be pleased to know we did get the sweetcorn, pumpkins (above) and summer brassicas (below) planted out before Glastonbury (and we had a great time too!), and the brassicas have all been safely netted (although it was a bit of a rush job - don't laugh!).


This is our lettuce patch.

Oops. If I had time, I'd pull it all up and start again, but I just don't. I wonder if I can save seed from all the mustard, mizuna and cress which has bolted... In fact a lot of what you see here is bolted crops, presumably from the stress of weed-crowding (and lack of thinning, of course).

But who wants to talk about weeds? What's important is that the eating part of this whole enterprise has really got going now.

Tonight I cooked this amazing summer chicken stew, from a recipe I saw on Market Kitchen yesterday (which you can find here, if you like, and I highly recommend it) with Nome-grown potatoes, carrots, broad beans, onion, peas (the mangetout and sugar snaps have been getting huge under all those weeds) and lovage and mint! I have yet to master the art of food photography - the picture below looks rather anaemic - but WOW, it was well worth trudging to the plot in the rain after work for!