Cracking Carrots!

I cannot say just how pleased I am this evening after cycling to the Hill, as I have actually pulled some very, very impressive CARROTS! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! It’s only taken me two years! Admittedly, it’s 10 days too late for the Show, but, hey, you can’t have everything!

The crops are growing like fury due to the warm & very wet August we are having – I’ve weeded the carrot seedlings this evening, but in the other beds the leaves of the beans & the squash in particular don’t give the weeds much of a chance.

In fact the squash leaves don’t give anything else much a chance – the tomatoes sharing the same bed are just about holding their own, but when it comes to picking them when they eventually turn red, I’m going to need to be armed with a big stick, I think!

I did fight my way through to pick a mandarin sized SQUASH (pomme d’or) – these are supposed to be apple sized winter squash, one person sized. The one I picked was indeed a one person size – a small person size at that – but the skin was cured hard, so I guess that it was ready.

Cut in half with the seeds scooped out & roasted for tea tonight, it was very tasty indeed. Just as well, as I think there are a couple of dozen more of these on the plant.

I picked a couple of big handfuls of the FRENCH BEANS (barlotto lingua) – 8 to 10” long round pencil-like bean which don’t actually look anything at all like either the dwarf French bean (firetongue) or climbing French beans barlotto saved from last year, but there we are.

I also picked half a dozen RUNNER BEANS (reg-next-plot) which I steamed for tea with the carrots & they absolutely melted in the mouth. Fabulous!