Garlic and carrots

carrots from the deep raised bed

My deep raised bed has actually produced some pretty big carrots, in spite of my fussing about not being able to grow good carrots.  These are big, and tasty, too, especially when cooked.

Apparently in the mountains, I can start sowing carrots for fall in mid-July.  I think I'll do that!  Maybe they'll be extra sweet after a bit of fall frost.

A quick trip down to the Piedmont meant harvesting a block of potatoes and a lot of green tomatoes (I didn't like the idea of leaving them for the resident woodchuck).

Hopefully the tomatoes will ripen and be decently tasty, for cooking at least.

fresh garlic ready to use

I've 'processed' plenty of garlic; it's all cleaned and ready to use.

I'll probably use it up more rapidly this year, as curing conditions weren't so good for long-term storage.

Beets, carrots, greens, and more

I sowed more seeds this evening.  It's exceptionally warm in the mountains, with teasingly warm soil. 

I'm quite sure it's too soon to sow beets and carrots (I did anyway), but an Asian green from Burpee  (Senposai, a cool-sounding hybrid between cabbage and mustard spinach-Komatsuna) might do well, along with a Japanese turnip variety from a local seed company (Sow True) called Shogoin.

My spinach, peas, and chard have all emerged, but I was chastened by seeing an extremely productive bed of overwintered chard and spinach near the local whole foods/organic market. 

Yikes, the spinach leaves were giant (uh, thanks to 10-10-10?) and the chard looked big, too, for this time of year,  And this was just in a small front-yard veggie garden.  Hmm.    Or maybe they just hadn't harvested the spinach, so that's the reason for the big leaves....or it's some enormous-leaved spinach variety?