And so I attempted to do this:
To try and achieve this:
The results so far have been promisingish. There was a very long stage where I thought the entire thing would be an expensive mistake. The compost sank slightly and the sand didn't, which meant watering it resulted in the sand washing over the earthy bits where the carrots were supposed to be growing. In addition, water + sand resulted in a lovely greenish tinge, which didn't fill me with hope that I'd be growing anything but mould.
Maybe I could claim to be growing nutritious algae? Or creating my own penicillin? Would you guys buy that?
However, little shoots finally appeared and it looks as though we have full-blown carrot action happening.
In theory. I've been betrayed by promising-looking carrots before, the filthy leafy-headed liars. We'll have to see what's actually underneath when the time comes to pull them up.
The observant among you might notice that only half of the carrots have come up. When I decided to grow my second batch of carrots this year, I bought several different varieties of interesting colours to experiment with, but I also bought a good amount of a nice reliable orange type called Eskimo. It was basically my control group - the weird carrots might fail, but I could rely on Eskimo to come up regardless of weather, watering or whatever.
You can probably guess which seed variety was planted in the blank spaces. Bugger.
By the time I'd realised that the entire packet of seeds was rubbish, I'd already sown about 30 of them in various pots and planters around the garden. Every time a tub came free after harvesting onions, nasturtiums, mange tout or garlic, I'd followed the same plan as with the experiment - I'd bored out holes with the drainpipe, filled them with special compost and stuck some Eskimo seeds in there to provide autumnal vegetables. To say I'm annoyed at wasting my time and effort would be something of an understatement.
To make matters worse, by the time I'd realised that I'd effectively been carefully planting expensive grit, it was verging on too late to rectify the situation. You *can* plant carrots in August, but they have to be the quickest growing variety possible, you have to hope there won't be an early frost and you have to feel lucky. Plus, when the packet says you can sow in August, they really mean the weekend of the 2nd/3rd, rather than the 24th.
Still, I've gone around today and resown all the sites with a variety of carrot seeds that I know do grow very quickly. I used them last year to great success and I've got no idea why I didn't just use them again - I still had half a packet left! I suspect I got overexcited with the January seed-buying fervour and wanted to try something new. Shan't be doing that again.
I also took the opportunity to move some dirt around and built a new bed for carrots, as I've discovered that a lot of vegetables do better in a bed than a pot and want to see if that holds true for carrots. With any luck, the big sowing today should means that we'll be inundated with carrots for Christmas. We'll see.
In one last bit of more successful news, I finally have a confirmed cauliflower head!
It's only one, out of nine, and it is very petite, but I'm still claiming success. With luck, it's still growing and there'll actually be enough for a meal in there when it comes time to slaughter it. Here's hoping.
PJW
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