You can’t go wrong with baby carrots, it seems. They are, well, cute (I’ve heard people say that way more than once). So you can buy them and eat them, or maybe stick ’em in a clear vase full of water for a while (idea!)… In any case, these Nelson carrots are not only fun to look at, and small, they’re pretty tasty! Nice crunch, and good sweetness for summer. Because of the kinda slow-growth in this cloudy weather, we took the time to do a second carrot thinning, just to harvest these (often, at this point, they’d be bigger, and we’d start digging up whole rows).
Also along for the ride, and sold out quite early, baby beets, mostly the candy-striped Chioggia (below), with a few red Kestrel in there. And, a couple of varieties of lettuce, the super-red Granada oakleaf and the butterhead Kendo. Both have a strong, bold taste, able to hold their own in sandwiches or…anywhere else. Plus, not in sight, all-lettuce mesclun (well, baby leaf mix).
Along with the last of the Sugar Ann snap peas, that was it for a fairly rainy, kinda rained-out Saturday at the farmers’ market… Still, fun!
Beautiful stuff! Looks delicious.
I’m wondering where you’re selling your goods on Saturdays (which farmers’ market). Anywhere close to Toronto? I hope so!
It has been one slow season. Middle of july and cucumbers are just starting to form. I keep hoping for a warm, evenly moist remainder of summer and a warm fall. You know the best of all worlds.
Are you sure those are Nelson carrots? I don’t see a blunt tip in the whole bunch :)
All of us blog readers are suffering because of your twitter addiction! And btw, David, Nelson carrots present differently depending on the soil they are grown in! I have had pointy and blunt in one bed!
Trish: We’re at the Peterborough market.
Dan: Yeah, it’s crazy. I think this is my first season like this, with perfect rain, and just this steady mix of 65-70% cloudy days. It’s weird. Last year, it was straightforward really wet and cloudy. This year, it’s hard to remember it even only a couple months in as being cloudy, because the temperature is good, and the sunny days are great. I imagine it’s not just the lack of sun, but also switching back and forth every few days from bursts of “normal” summer to…cloud, that’s messing up the growing cycles. More nutty climate change weather, I guess.
David: I hope so! :) They’ll get blunter. These are only babies, about 1/2″ diameter at the top. As far as I can remember, all carrots start out pointy and the blunt-tip and cylindrical ones fill out when they get big. I’ll check when the Touchon, another Nantes type, get a bit bigger. Also, as Janet mentioned, they grow kinda variable. I think I read that Nelson is a Nantes/Imperator hybrid (cylindrical/pointy), which might explain that.
janet: Yikes! Twitter is like…digital crack. The virtual farm is falling apart while I’m obsessively reading and retweeting all this mainly alarming stuff. Way worse than listening to the news. And it’s draining (but kinda fascinating) following active activists. Salmon fisheries collapsing here, Monsanto getting into GM wheat over there, hundreds of thousands of acres of US farmland being sanitized against E coli,…it doesn’t stop. And then there’s the 60-second video cooking tips. OMG. I gotta get out. And back to the blog. Soon! :) Thanks for the poke!!
Oh my god! Those carrots look so heavenly! I could eat the computer screen.
This inspired me to get out and brave the VA heat and humidity. Thinned the carrots and put them in a vase (Great Idea!)
Your pictures have done it! We are def. going to grow some carrots next year!
Great work everything looks amzing!