Things had been going along quite nicely really, especially considering I don't particularly know what I'm doing but this week things went a bit pear-shaped (or is that "carrot-shaped"?)
So the story with the carrots is this. I planted them from seedlings (something my father-in-law has since told me isn't really a very good idea) and I put in both orange and red varieties. The orange carrots never seemed to be particularly happy but the red ones were going gang-busters. At the time, I thought this was a testament to using heritage varieties rather than more highly cultivated ones and I had delusions of eating huge, yummy, red carrots. Apparently, the heritage variety was simply better at capitalising on the fact that they had all been planted in soil that had too much nutrient and wasn't sandy enough. (So, by the way, were the parsnip.) And yes, if I hadn't planted it, I wouldn't know what it was either - unrecognisable!
Anyway, the red carrots looked like they were growing well (from the top) but underneath they were going just a little bit nuts and then this week we got our first insect attack - aphids. Which left the lovely green tops looking like this:
So, today I pulled up the red carrots that I thought would be great:
Hmmmm...
And the orange carrots that I was sure would be a failure:
Better but even some of them were a bit on the kooky side...
Hmmm...
Anyway, I've learnt something for next time. More garlic spray, more ladybugs, less soil, more sand.
