I love carrots. Crunchy, sweet and vitamin-packed, the carrot is the perfect veggie. Cooked or raw, I could eat carrots until I turned orange with beta-carotene.

(Note: Keep your nasty bag of baby carrots away from me – I’m an old school carrot sticks kinda girl. Didja know store-bought baby carrots are actually eight-inch carrots in disguise? After these giants are harvested from the field, they are chopped into small pieces, peeled, and “polished.”)

As my garden grew, I was filled with carrot concerns. Are they planted too close together? Are they getting too much sun? Too much water?

When I dug up the carrot bed for cool season crops, I was surprised by my bounty of bite-sized veggies. I removed their green tops, gave them a quick scrub, then shared my harvest with friends and family.

A month later, I’m still munching and crunching my homegrown baby carrots.

This late in the growing season, people start to think about putting their gardens to bed. Corn is turning brown. Cukes are tired. Tomatoes make a mad dash to the finish line with new green fruit.

Who could’ve guessed that my cool season crops would outgrow my carrot harvest? Arugula, kale, mustard, and broccoli rapini made the most of the rain - and my salad plate. I thin the bed before dinner and find twice as many greens the next morning for my bag lunch.

Sometimes I even find a rogue carrot or two.

Cool season crops can also be grown indoors! If you have a spare salad bowl, a sunny window and lazy cats, you can have fresh greens all winter long.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2005 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Beets, Carrots + Root veggies, Greens + Lettuces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.