High Calcium Carrot

This carrot grew right through a piece of rock!

To understand how this is possible it’s necessary to understand how a carrot develops.  When the seed germinates it sends down a tap root which determines the length of the carrot.  Once the tap root is done growing in length it begins to grow in width, meaning it thickens.  The tap root isn’t particularly strong so when it hits a rock in the ground it can either go around it, break into 2 or 3 roots and continue or just stop there.  Rocky soils, like ours, produce oddly shaped carrots because of this; we regularly pull up curved carrots, stubby carrots and carrots with 2 or 4 legs.  In this particular case, when the tap root of this carrot hit this rock there must have been a hole in it that was perfectly aligned to let the root continue on to the other side.  What are the chances?  Amazing huh?

After the freezess

We took the row covers off today.  What the bitter wind didn’t burn, the freeze did. We had frost on Monday morning and again, briefly but unexpected,  on Wednesday morning.

Many of the bean plants are fried.

bean rows after the freeze

There are a few beans hanging on, and some flowers, but we’ve lost so much leaf cover that what remains may not recover. We’ll water sparingly to avoid more stress, and see what happens.

Even under cover, the tops of most of the tomato plants froze.

tomato plants after the freeze

We were already harvesting some cherry tomatoes, and most of those fell off the plants. We collected them today, and will bring them to market- time to make Green Tomato Jam! The larger tomatoes are still on the plants, in various stages of sizing up. We’ll see what happens with them.

The brassicas as a whole, as well as the chard and carrots, fared much better. They’re bright and perky, as you can see here. But look closely to the right and the left and you’ll see burnt banana leaves and bronzed guava leaves. The greener trees in the background are avocados, which seem for the most part OK- a little bronzing on some top leaves.

happy carrots after the freeze