Experimenting with carrots...

So it's Sunday afternoon, I've just returned from lunch (carvery-it is Sunday!) with friends, having spent the morning hunting out new seeds and tools for the garden with my Mum. Last year was my first year growing vegetables and actively growing flowers in my garden, seeing my first seedling appear out of the compost got me hooked. Since that moment, I have grown carrots, beans, courgettes, spinach, beetroot, sweetcorn and easy peasy lettuce leaves. I am constantly learning about gardening, tricks to avoid insects/cats/birds, ways to get the most out of your space, and good fertilisers.

Today I bought loads of different seeds, from mangetout to poppys. But the rather strange looking bucket experiment relates to the carrots I am going to grow this year. When I started turning over the soil in my garden last year it quickly became apparent that I wouldn't really be able to grow carrots or parsnips, or really any root veg, due to the shear amount of stones, glass and other bits and bobs in the ground. Though very fertile, it's just not any good for stuff that likes to grow down and not up! Pondering this problem, I came up with half sinking buckets (with the bottoms cut out), and filling them up with compost. This way, I reckon the carrots with have at least a foot of uninterrupted earth to grow down through, hopefully producing long slender orangey goodness! I hope it works, I have planted Autumn King and Nantes varieties...

I hope to get out into the garden again tomorrow to plant a very bushy heather plant I bought today, amoung other little tasks such as cleaning out all my plant pots and tools, sweeping the path down, and crucially cutting some of the stems from my Rhubarb plant (visable in the background behind the buckets!). This little beast I started growing last year in July, given to me by a friend the plant started off very very small, no bigger than my hand. After seeking some advice, I planted it with lots of produce from my compost bin and watered regularly. Over Christmas it started to wither a little bit and retract in on itself, at one point I thought the snow had killed it completely! And then, about 3 weeks ago, it started going mad! There are decent size stems growing out with gigantic leaves (poisonous), I was under the impression I had to 'force' the stems by covering with a large pot or bucket, but perhaps the snow did this for me?! Perhaps I will cut some stems and see how they taste....