We like our garden pretty wild , but some things grow better when they’re more organized. I love carrots. Last year I planted seeds but the rows quickly were taken over by other plants and got lost in the jungle. I harvested one delicious but pathetic carrot. This year, I am going to give them the attention and care they need to flourish. It was a little sad to break up the verdant beds, but it’s carrots or bust!
We started by eyeing out a few twelve inch wide planting rows across the beds currently bursting with greens in what we call our “kitchen garden” – a handful of small garden beds and fruit trees just out our kitchen/back door (don’t underestimate the importance of of proximity in your own garden design; get a few small garden beds as close to the kitchen as possible!).
Then we cut swathes of salad greens from the beds and prepared soil for seeding. We ate a lot of salad and gave a bunch away to friends. snip, snip
Leftover plant refuse including roots was used to thickly mulch the peas. (In permaculture lingo, this is called “stacking functions”, i.e. a single action or intervention has multiple benefits.) With this mulch the peas will likely require no irrigation, even with the increasingly warm temperatures.
Furrows were made, little tiny carrot seeds planted, and voila, a new bed of mixed greens and carrots. We can still harvest greens daily and keep a close eye on the seedlings. The regular watering that the carrot seedlings require will keep the salad greens tender at the same time.
These types of seed beds do need a little more care and attention than the wilder parts of the garden, including watering and weeding. Luckily I’m good at both those things.
