This lackadaisical attitude to carrot planting probably explains how I later ended up with about a billion carrots growing on my balcony - my best gardening haul EVER! The carrots are the one thing (besides the kale + rosemary) that thrived during my neglectful four week jaunt to Europe. I came home to a mass of carrot tops poking out of the ground screaming "pick me, pick me".
The thing is, I wasn't actually sure what I'd find once I pulled up all the carrots. I mean these guys had been in the ground for MONTHS. I was expecting them to be a) kinda rotten and/or b) all growing together into one big twisty carrot seeing as I had not taken the time to plant each individual seed into its own little hole on the garden.
Imagine my surprise when I unearthed a mound of perfect looking carrots - albeit, some were a little small. I was chuffed. And I was overwhelmed. That's A LOT of carrots to figure out what to do with. Ummm...help! I washed them all off in a bucket on the balcony, trimmed their tops and promptly went inside to plea to twitter for a recipe, or 12, for carrots.
The twitter-sphere quickly came back with a plethora of salad recipes, the most interesting of which was a recipe by Jamie Oliver that included ginger, lemon, chilli and toasted almonds. Best of all I got to use my nifty electric grater/blender thing that I one for "best story" from the Sweet Swap fiasco.
I really liked this salad, It was super zesty and refreshing and the chilli + ginger provided a good hit of heat. The Boy thinks I went a bit heavy handed on the ginger. Whoops!
Happy gardening, Miss Piggy xoxo
ahhh carrots still escape me! but ive just put out some seeds at my third attempt yesterday so here's hoping i can use my lessons learned the past two attempts and some luck for this batch!
ReplyDeleteWell done - balcony carrots!!!
ReplyDeleteThe carrot salad sounds lovely, especially with the almonds and ginger.
ReplyDelete- Helen Number 2 (haha)
Good crop! We love carrots (all colours, all sizes) at home, we have them every week in various ways.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great haul! I was just reading recently about a pesto made from carrot tops, the green, above soil bits. Yes, don't you love my technical words for the green bits. So if you grow carrots again, maybe you can see what you can whip up with those. Salad looks fab and so glad you are having fun with your prize.
ReplyDeletelovely haul! cant wait to try plant my own!
ReplyDelete