Over Winter Carrots / Chicken Condo
I told you the other day that I had been able to pull something besides old dead plants from the garden beds on Saturday, here they are; Sweet Baby Carrots. I read somewhere last year that you can store carrots right in the ground. I take pretty much everything that I learn with a grain of salt, at least that is until I can test it and learn from it myself. So that being said, last fall I sowed a couple of small rows of carrots into one of my garden beds. They grew well through the early fall, and then slowed and finally went dormant around mid Nov
ember when the cold got here. I left them in the ground until this Saturday when I went through the beds to prep them for the upcoming plantings.What I had read was that over wintering carrots in the ground helps the sugars to farm better and can actually give them better flavor that spring planted ones. I have to say YES. I AGREE! They are small mind you, the longest ones are around 6 inches long but what a flavor bang. I will definitely be doing this again, and with a little mulching and care, I should be able to get 100 ft diet carrots throughout next winter. Yeah! I love it when an experiment yields good results. (On a side note, I also tested overwintering carrots that we
re grown in a large round traditional planter (18"wide x 20" tall) This did not work. I think they got too cold and wet over winter because they all were soft and mushy, not at all edible.)To your right you'll see another new addition this weekend; the "Chicken Condo". The chooks were starting to get to about triple the size that they were when we got them, and they needed some new digs. That, and I needed to find a way of raising the lamp up
higher to ween them from it slowly. So into the stash of Dell boxes I go again and here you we are, two stories of duct taped, carboard, poultry luxury! Now they have plenty of space to roam around and I've bought myself a bit more time until I have to have the coop finished. This is a good thing since A~ keeps reiterating the "I want the coop to look nice. Your gonna make it look nice right?" mantra. But hey, have I let her down yet? No need to answer that Honey;-)
P~
Labels:
100 ft Diet,
chickens,
gardening
5 comments:
I agree with the carrots, never had better than out of the ground after several frosts!
This is the first year I've tried it, but you can bet it'll be on the list to do again!!
P~
Your chicken condo looks absolutely brilliant. I'm getting my little girls end of this month. I'm starting them out in a rabbit cage but they'll get too big for that before it is time to put them in their luxury villa outside. I love the condo idea. I'll be using it.
Anonymous~
A luxury chicken villa, I love it! I'm glad I could give you a good idea. Hopefully you'll post me a link to it when your done.
Don't be a stranger.
P~
Last year three of my carrots were'nt yet ripe and it was fall. So i left them in the ground till spring. Now it's May and their alive and huge. All i had to do was leave them there and do nothing. I don't think all varieties can do quite that good though; it did say on the package that they were an ideal variety for overwintering... but still, they were completely fine. And i live in the Pacific Northwest!
P.S. the variety was called danvers half long from ed hume seeds brand.
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