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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 13, 2009 8:24:57 GMT -5
I replant my thinnings as well and have great success with it. I have Muscade carrots coming up. VERY interesting! They have a spicy/bitter flavor to them that is wonderful in potato salad. However, many of them are rather woody and shock of shocks, they are bolting? Some are actually going to seed? THAT, I don't understand at all.
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sphinxeyes
gardener
Suburbia, small garden in side yard, containers on larger back deck. Hot humid summers.
Posts: 154
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Post by sphinxeyes on Jun 15, 2009 17:10:39 GMT -5
I think I waited too long to thin the carrots. It's been three days and the past two have been warm and sunny, but the carrot greens are still wilted and limp. Will the roots continue to grow even if the greens don't make a full recovery? I decided not to thin the St. Valery. I'll just wait and hope they get big enough to harvest in the next few weeks.
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Post by grungy on Jun 15, 2009 22:39:02 GMT -5
sock the water to them. And maybe a very weak fertilizer tea.
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Post by canadamike on Jun 15, 2009 23:14:43 GMT -5
Stop worrying about your veggies too much. They are like people, having good and bad days,
That said, they are like people, so they need nourishement, but especially water. The way I see it, you are reacting like a person in front a technical problem. There is nothing technical about a garden.
Everything you look at them, think in the way you would as a mommy for the kids. You will be a mom one day, and when the kid will say I am thirsty, He will get water. You will make sure.
Plants do not talk with words. But if they wilt, they need water. If they are too crowded, they are like 3-4 kids living on one kid diet, needing more. Act accordingly, in a very natural way. It is pointless to look at 2 vegetables lookinf weak when they are too close and ask yourself what is the problem. Thin them, it is as simple as that. You can survive with one less carrot anyway, so why the stress. Follow your mother instinct.
It is easy to see veggies you do not knoe are grown too close. If they do not produce expected results, they are too close, Get rid of one out of two. The foodstore is the soil and if there are 3 kids to eat the food of one they will al grow weak. And one carrot, one broccoli or else , given more space will reward you with more food.
What you get out of the ground comes from the food store in the ground. REMEMBER THAT IT HAS LIMITS, AND WILL GROW A LESSER NUMBER OF VEGGIES TO A BIGGER SIZE GIVEN FOOD AVAILABILITY. Just think apple trees. The roots are the same, the tree is the same, THE FOOD STORE IS THE SAME, so you thin them so you get more big apples, preferring having fewer but bigger healthy childs. The tree can only give you so much apple ''meat'', it can be divided in 100 or in 20 apples, depending on you. Its job is to produce seeds, so the more the merrier, But once numbers are curtailed, its new job becomes making the lesser number of fruits more attractive to animals to eat them, hence more ''apple meat''
The same goes with other veggies. WE want them big, they want to produce seeds. In real life, 2 carrots too close will have smaller roots but will go to seed anyway. You just want one root of good size instead of 2-3 that are meaningless. From the plant point of view
Just find the inner mommy in you, and know that when in doubt it is better to thin. It is much safer to do this than the opposite. Would you be the mommy of 8 kids that die of hunger or 2 that have enough food?
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Post by PatrickW on Jun 15, 2009 23:57:16 GMT -5
I don't know if something has really gone wrong with your carrots or not, but it is a pretty common technique to sow carrots a little thick, then thin as you go along and eat the thinnings. You just have to be careful not to go too overboard, because it is possible to sow so thickly they don't grow properly. Normally, it works well to give the plants more space as they need it and their growth slows down.
I guess in a few days you'll know one way or another for sure...
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sphinxeyes
gardener
Suburbia, small garden in side yard, containers on larger back deck. Hot humid summers.
Posts: 154
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Post by sphinxeyes on Jun 15, 2009 23:57:18 GMT -5
Yikes! Alright alright, I'll try not to be so overprotective of my "children". As it so happened it rained tonight, so maybe that will have quenched my thirsty carrots. And pulling every other carrot in the other bed does sound like a better solution that pulling them all and then replanting them. In the meantime I'll work on honing my maternal instincts in the garden. No "octo-mom" references though please. >.<
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Post by canadamike on Jun 16, 2009 0:02:22 GMT -5
Sorry for the octo-mom reference. I hate reality TV too But I think the reference helped nailed it
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 16, 2009 5:53:46 GMT -5
Sphinx, you are new to gardening? I THINK I read that earlier? I might be wrong because I don't remember it clearly and I can't find the message I was thinking of.
IF the memory is correct and IF you are fairly new to gardening (like only for a few years) your cautiousness signifies your growing skills and abilities. Just look at me and my poor tomatoes! I'm fairly new to gardening myself. ESPECIALLY on the scale we now garden. Ad to that the fact that from place to place, things are different everywhere you go.
Stay on top things and don't allow yourself a lot of time to be discouraged. Just enough to feed determination! As I tell my husband (who does get very negative sometimes) there is no such thing as a failure, just a learning experience. I think I yelled that at him so loudly and angrily the last time he started to whine that it really stuck in his head! ;o)
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sphinxeyes
gardener
Suburbia, small garden in side yard, containers on larger back deck. Hot humid summers.
Posts: 154
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Post by sphinxeyes on Jun 18, 2009 17:38:05 GMT -5
Yes, I'm still a novice at veggie gardening and this is the first year I've tried carrots, so most of my concerns sprout from not having any previous experiences to measure against. This week it's been cold and rainy, so the carrots are getting plenty of water. The greens, well they're still green, though they are still flopped over. It might be that when I dug them back in I didn't dig them deep enough. I did take a few carrots from the St. Valery bed...deciding to thin them by harvesting only a few at a time. The ones I harvested were already fairly big and taste wise very moist and mild, not as sweet as the Scarlet Nantes. As for the rest of the garden, things are looking great! Tomatoes are all coming along nicely, no signs of BER yet, even with all the rain. *fingers crossed* I got some big tubs for the potatoes and buried them up to the last few leaves. Some of the biggest plants already have little tuberlings, I guess you could call them. Those become the seed potatoes for next year then, right? I also have some cucumbers which now have blossoms. I need to rig a trellis of some sort for those soon. The melons are also doing well, plenty of blossoms, though no signs of beginning fruit yet. But it might be too early for that and maybe the cool weather is slowing them down. My bush beans have blossoms now too, though the greasy beans that I thought were bush beans, I think are actually pole beans, because they are starting to go crazy and vine out towards my other plants. Michel, if you're reading this, I sent you a PM about those.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 20, 2009 21:51:47 GMT -5
I've had good luck with carrots on both coasts. Course I've also learned that what works on one side does NOT necessarily work on the other side. What is your soil like? Have you considered growing rooted parsley? I have Hamburg parsley. It grows like a carrot, you can use the tops as parsley and the root can be cooked in stews and such and they maintain that wonderful parsley flavor. I like them in tiny dice and tossed into a VERY hot skillet slicked with good olive oil along with some finely minced yellow onion and perhaps some minced sweet pepper. Give it a quick stir then pour over a well beaten egg or two. Shake vigorously to keep from sticking, and when nearly completely set, tilt the pan over a plate and start it rolling at the top and roll it right onto the plate. A shave or two of good Vermont cheddar or granna padano, a lovely mace spiked semmel roll and you've got a wonderful and nutritionally power packed meal!
I can send you some seed if you want to give 'em a shot. They should do better in your zone than they do in mine.
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Post by grungy on Jun 20, 2009 23:27:56 GMT -5
Jo, remember me this fall in trading season and if you have a few seeds to spare then I wouldn't mind trying out yur parsley.
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sphinxeyes
gardener
Suburbia, small garden in side yard, containers on larger back deck. Hot humid summers.
Posts: 154
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Post by sphinxeyes on Jun 21, 2009 2:29:35 GMT -5
I haven't tried growing any herbs from seed before. Usually that's when I break down and buy a few pots from Home Depot, but even then I always forget to use them in cooking. My parsley now is starting to yellow, so I cut it way back. I have some fennel growing, but not for eating. That's planted in the butterfly garden. The black swallowtails like to lay their eggs on them. I've already spotted a few tiny orange eggs, and when the caterpillars emerge I'll snip off a few sprigs and set them up in a screened cage indoors. Then watch them grow, turn into chrysalises and set them free in the garden when they emerge as butterflies. Swallowtails are supposed to like parsley and carrots too, but so far I haven't seen any eggs on them.
My soil is pretty healthy, a few inches down it's clay, but for the carrot beds I amended it with compost and sand. That omelet you mentioned sounds really good! What's a mace spiked semmel though? I know what a mace is and I just googled semmel and found out it's a sort of bread loaf, so I'm confused now, lol. Is it a spiky loaf of bread? o.o
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 21, 2009 7:54:42 GMT -5
SPIKEY BREAD!?!? ;D ;D TOO funny! Mace is the outer covering of nutmeg. It imparts a similar flavor as nutmeg but much stronger so one uses a lot less therefore it isn't as visible in the finished product. Semmel Rolls are the traditional bread used for bratwurst in Michigan and Wisconsin (?) Those of you living in that area, chime in on this to provide correction if necessary.
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