I love this time of year. Late fall, when everything starts to cool off and you can feel winter coming in the air. Piles of pumpkins arrive at the grocery stores and mums show up at the garden center.
Gardening is so much better this time of year. One can garden all day without fear of sweating to death. No threat of said sweating for at least a few more months. The weeds grow slower, the bugs are fewer, and the garden rebounds from the hellish nightmare of sumer.
And winter veggies!! I ADORE winter veggies. Mama was from Jackson, Mississippi, so you know I love me some greens. Broccoli and cauliflower are sure winners, as are turnips and beets and carrots. Romaesco, aka Broccoflower, a curious fractally spirally thing that tastes like a cauliflowery broccoli, or broccolish cauliflower. Hence the name. As you can see in the first photo above, I plant my radishes with my carrots to get a good stand of each. Carrot seedlings are weak little things, so meek that even the slightest crust on top of the soil will smother them. Radishes on the other hand are tough little musclemen, busting up through the toughest soil, crust or no crust. I guess you'd say carrots are like three-year-olds - cut the crust off, Mom! Okay, honey.
They grow well together for another reason - by the time the radishes are harvestable, the carrots are big enough to need thinning, so I pick my radishes and that thins my carrots. Neat, huh?
What kind of carrots, you ask? Multicolored ones of course. There's just something about pulling a purple carrot out of the ground that makes me insanely happy. You should try them. Then you can be insanely happy, too.
~*~
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