Tag Archives: Carrots

October 2017 Growing Update

The last of our 'Snow White' carrots harvested from our allotment plot.

October was a windy month, with two storms battering us here on the east coast of England. First was Ophelia, then came Brian. It’s been a beautiful month though, with lovely autumnal colours. It’s been a relatively quiet month for us in terms of our crops. Our hard work in the spring and early summer has left us with a lot to harvest, which we’ve been busily doing. But our failure to sow more crops for most of the summer means that we’ve got a lot of growing space not being used at the moment. This month we harvested the last…

The first harvest of this year's winter squashes.

August has been a very enjoyable month for us. We’ve been merrily harvesting and weeding, and enjoying some lovely weather whilst we’ve been doing it. The month started with us away for the weekend camping, which naturally meant that it rained, and so our garden and allotment got a good watering. From then on the weather was a bit up and down, some wet and almost autumnal days, but some gloriously sunny days, including the hottest August bank holiday on record! Our biggest regret this month has been not getting more crops sowed, as we still have some unused space…

This month saw our first broad beans of the year harvested.

What a turn around we’ve had in the weather this month! The arctic winds have subsided and for the last couple of weeks it’s been like summer. Plus a few times in the last week we’ve had rainfall at night followed by a sunny day, which has done wonders for our plants. We’ve been very busy this month in our garden and at the allotment, although we’re still behind schedule. We’ve also started harvesting, with our overwintered broad beans now yielding returns. It’s been another month where we’ve struggled to find time to get the jobs done that we wanted…

Our bath tub containing the last of the leeks and carrots harvested from the allotment.

I started last month’s growing update with the old proverb ‘March winds and April showers bring forth the May flowers’. Well March was windy enough, but April brought us precious little rain. No April showers this year. We had so little rain that digging the fast-draining soil at the allotment has seemed like an impossible task. The first couple of weeks of April were very warm and dry and we started hardening off our tomato plants. But then arctic winds came in, and with them frosts, so we took to bringing our tomato plants indoors of an evening to protect…

Some of our young tomato plants enjoying the warm weather and longer days in their cold frame.

‘March winds and April showers bring forth the May flowers’, or so the old proverb goes. Well if this March is anything to go by, then May should be a floral delight! The winds that Storm Doris brought in, and Storm Ewan perpetuated, have died down, but never seem to have fully left us. But the days are now getting longer and spring is officially here. As of last weekend the clocks went forward which means it is still light when I get home from work. This week I have taken full advantage of this and I’ve been getting garden…

A romanesco growing at our allotment.

February has been a busy month for us. We’ve been enjoying our crops from our garden and allotment, and busy planning for the coming months. Regular readers will have noticed that there were no growing updates for the months of December and January. In truth there wasn’t a great deal to write about. We were rather busy every weekend over the festive period, and with the days so short at that time of year, getting outside and cultivating before or after work didn’t seem like it would be a practical option. In short we spent very little time in the…

An early autumn treat - the biggest pumpkin we have ever grown.

September is already coming to an end. It’s been a great month for us in the garden and at the allotment. We’ve had some exciting harvests and we’ve been enjoying the changing of the seasons. The month started with weather cloudier than we had experienced in August. It was still warm, but there wasn’t as much sun, and the days were getting noticeably shorter. We had a fair bit of rain in the first week or so, which prompted another surge in courgette production. But it did give us cause for concern regarding our drying Martock field beans and Boddington’s…

Just some of what we grew and produced this year. Top left - bottom right: winter squashes, parsnip, kohlrabi, a batch of jam, mushrooms, spiralised courgette ('courgetti'), plums, tomatoes and courgettes, squashes in our pumpkin patch.

This year was our first in our current home with our rather large garden. We moved into this house in May, and although we were late out with many of our crops, we’ve had a very successful growing season. In this post we’ll look back over the year and share where we feel we were successful, and where we were not. Soft Fruits By far our largest and most used soft fruit crop was our plums. We can’t really take much credit for this crop, as all of the trees were already here when we moved in, and we have…

Homemade carrot wine fermenting in a demijohn

I’ve never made carrot wine before, but I have been tempted. I was recently passing a farm that was selling feed carrots for £1.50 a net. I decided to invest this small sum and try to put the carrots to the best use I could. The majority were used as food, but I thought being in possession of so many small and forked carrots was the perfect excuse to give carrot wine a try. I searched online and found a recipe that was being raved about. Generally I refer to Brian Leverett’s Winemaking Month by Month book for all things…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Tag Archives: Carrots

October 2017 Growing Update

August 2017 Growing Update

May 2017 Growing Update

April 2017 Growing Update

March 2017 Growing Update

February 2017 Growing Update

September 2016 Growing Update

2015 – The Year In Review

Making Carrot Wine