Garden-fresh carrots for Christmas

One of the challenges when I moved from a Zone 2 to a Zone 7 was figuring out the gardening rules. All sorts of wonderful things grow in my area but I've had to learn HOW they grow. Roses, which were pretty much an annual back in Saskatchewan, verge on being a weed around here. Marigolds, a staple of previous gardens, are lucky to last overnight after the earwigs find them. Heather likes moist roots but peonies need drainage. The dirt is a random mix of rock, clay and silt so soil amending is a gardening lifestyle skill. But the climate means you can plant green peas in April and again in September but NOT in June because of the HEAT. Crop rotation is another gardening skill. And bug identification another that I won't dwell on right now.

When we did our addition last year, I had to rip out the only things that were growing at all for me - my raspberry patch and strawberry bed. They were planted in raised beds so that we could pick the dirt they grew in. And they were doing alright - just starting to produce consistently. But out they came.

This year my wonderful father reset the raised beds when he came to visit and we tried again. Nothing ambitious - just some snow peas, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. And a few potatoes that were sprouting in the cupboard.

The green peas produced - not enough for a meal - but enough for a healthy snack pretty much anytime we wandered by the garden. The potatoes gave us one meal of new red potatoes (yummy but skimpy). The cucumbers were much happier - we actually had to foist a few off on friends and neighbors. The lettuce yielded enough to add to a sandwich daily. And the tomatoes went insane - not necessarily in production but in size. Whew! And the carrots I forgot about.

Until today.

Now, we've had snow and rain and a couple nights of freezing temps so I wasn't expecting much. But I noticed the sad carrot tops laying along the ground and thought "Well, I guess I shouldn't leave them out much longer." (Okay, it wasn't a plan on my part - just my usual gardening neglect that typically sets in around August.) And you never know, parsnips benefit from a good frost before eating - maybe it works for carrots...

So after 6 months of watering and weeding and tending (and neglecting), here's our crop:















Wait, it looks much more significant after I get it cleaned up...














Don't laugh too hard. They were fresh and crisp and tasted very good both raw and cooked with just a hint of butter. We'll even add a couple to our Christmas day apple-carrot salad. How many of you can do that in December?