Love it :) The Bunnies are gobbling down the tops right now!

Beautiful kids and beautiful carrots. I'm so jealous!
Tree

Bon,

Hurray! Congratulations!

The carrots look terrific and I am so glad the divas have performed so well this year.

Your children are so beautiful! They are just darling.

I hope the rabbits are enjoying those carrot tops.

You must have had incredible rainfall this year. That's a really nice change after 2011 and 2012.

Dawn

Bon, I think your children look just like you.

Bon, if you want to try something, try mincing some carrot tops into a stew or soup. They lend a peppery flavor. Feeding them to the rabbits is a good thing too!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Thanks all!

Thanks, George. That sounds like something righteous to do. I like the idea. And this chilly morning makes me want some stew.

It's storming right now. We've received SO much rain and I'm happy. Our big old pecan tree is half dead.

Those look awesome! My carrots are stubby and deformed, like it's two carrots growing together. They were in brand new 1' raised beds too... Wondering what I did wrong..... :\

Hi Katie

I had a few looking that way. Mine was a result of over-crowding. I just have such a hard time thinning out potentials.

They still taste good. :)

Katie, I agree with Bon that they likely were too crowded. With carrots, it is best to thin early, following the package directions. Different varieties with different widths need different amounts of spacing, so follow the package directions for whatever variety you grow.

Or, if you did thin carefully and had the carrots at the proper spacing, then it likely was related to the soil. It also is really easy to accidentally leave two carrot plants growing very closely together because to the naked eye you think you're looking at the foliage of only one plant.

I don't know what sort of soil you had in the raised bed, but if it had a good percentage of clay in it, it could have been slightly too dense for the carrots to be happy. Or, if you are in an area that has had a lot of heavy rainfall during the growing season, heavy rainfall can compacts the soil even in a raised bed. Be sure that no one is walking on the bed where you are growing the carrots because that compacts the soil. I even scold the house cats when they are walking in a raised bed. I've tried for years to convince them to walk in the paths and stay out of the beds, and not necessarily with great success either.

If you feel like the soil mix was right and was light and fluffy and easy for the carrots to navigate their way through, and you feel like you thinned the right amount and that nothing was compacting the soil, then try a different variety the next time. Sometimes you have to experiment to find a variety that really likes growing in your particular soil. Most carrots will grow well for me in raised beds that have a high clay component, but the really wide, stocky varieties grow better than the ones that produce carrots that are longer and more narrow.

Dawn