{"id":11007,"date":"2014-09-01T19:38:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T02:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=11007"},"modified":"2014-09-10T14:15:45","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:15:45","slug":"the-cost-of-carrots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=11007","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Carrots."},"content":{"rendered":"

This was the first year that I grew carrots in containers.\u00a0 I did it because this guy <\/a>told me to.\u00a0 I found his instructive video by typing “growing carrots, lazy” into the search engine.\u00a0 The best gardening tip I can give you is to always add a comma and “lazy” when searching the internet for garden plans.\u00a0 I used to add the word “easy,” but obviously “easy” means different things to different people.\u00a0 “Easy” method suggestions included digging garden beds down to 18″ deep and making your own seed tape with flour, water, scissors, toilet paper, ruler, paintbrush, blah, blah, horribly not-easy-at-all blah.\u00a0 In fairness, I consider myself more “time-crunched” than “lazy.”\u00a0 But the internet gets too confused if you search for “growing carrots, time-crunched.”\u00a0 Everybody’s pretty much on the same page for “lazy.”<\/p>\n

As it turned out, planting carrots in containers was a wonderful idea.\u00a0 My parents left a bunch of empty patio containers here last year.\u00a0 I carried them to the garden.\u00a0 Filled them up with wheelbarrows of compost from the chicken pasture.\u00a0 Sprinkled the carrot seeds in rows that I dug with my index finger.\u00a0 Covered the rows back over with soil using the palm of my hand.\u00a0 Easy.\u00a0 Lazy.\u00a0 Whatevs.<\/p>\n

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But there were more benefits to carrots in containers than just getting it all done in 30 minutes.\u00a0 Unlike a row of carrots in the ground, containers were portable.\u00a0 I was able to move the pots to a different location when I decided they were in the way of the broccoli.\u00a0 I was able to group them together into a convenient square when I needed to cover the newly emerged seedlings with a sheet during a heavy frost.\u00a0\u00a0 I was able to line them up neatly under strips of shade cloth when the summer heat set in.<\/p>\n

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Weeding was easier in the pots, too.\u00a0 I didn’t have chickweed or Johnson grass trying to creep in amongst the carrots from the garden paths.\u00a0 The carrot tops sprouted and flourished before the temps were warm enough for any airborne weed seeds to get established, so the interlopers were easy to spot and pull out when they did arrive.\u00a0 Voila!\u00a0 Weed free carrots.<\/p>\n

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I’ll admit I sowed them too thickly for the pots.\u00a0 But that just meant that every time I thinned out the seedlings we had lots of mini-carrots\u00a0 for salads.\u00a0 And for CC the fat pony.\u00a0 And for little Harvey so that he didn’t have to sneak nibbles of the petunias when he thought I wasn’t looking.<\/p>\n

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Even when I didn’t thin the carrots enough to let them reach full size, they were still sweet and edible.\u00a0 Some were even entertaining.\u00a0 Carrots, please!!\u00a0 This is a family blog!<\/p>\n

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I pulled the last of the carrots out of the pots yesterday.\u00a0 Counting that batch, we had 5 harvests of carrots during the season (not counting the mini-carrots we got when thinning the seedlings).<\/p>\n

Most were in the 5-6″ range as you can see when compared to the peppers and eggplant.<\/p>\n

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But since this was the final harvest, I even pulled the smaller 3-4″ carrots, too.<\/p>\n

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Every harvest yielded about a gallon bag full of carrots.\u00a0 And each of those bags made about 2 side dishes for my family of 6.\u00a0 Plus a few extra salads and snacks for lunch boxes from the mini-carrots.<\/p>\n

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Since the pots were free and the compost was free, all I spent to feed my family healthy, naturally grown carrots a little over 10 times was the purchase price of seeds.\u00a0 The seeds cost…., well, I bought about….um, a couple or,….a few, I think….let’s see.\u00a0 I’m sure I have a gardening journal somewhere around here that will tell me how many packets of seeds I bought and how much they cost.\u00a0 Somewhere around here.\u00a0 Probably….maybe….<\/p>\n

Uh.\u00a0 Nope.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I grew five 1 gallon bags of carrots.\u00a0 And the cost of naturally grown carrots per gallon is…..well, um.\u00a0 I think carrots are sold by the pound in the store.\u00a0 And 1 gallon is equal to….uh….hmmm.\u00a0 If gallons are volume and pounds are weight then you need to….change, or…uh, convert….huh.<\/p>\n

WTH?<\/p>\n

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Listen, people.<\/p>\n

I saved time and money on carrots this year.<\/p>\n

Really.<\/p>\n

I swear.<\/p>\n

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This was the first year that I grew carrots in containers.\u00a0 I did it because this guy told me to.\u00a0 I found his instructive video by typing “growing carrots, lazy” into the search engine.\u00a0 The best gardening tip I can give you is to always add a comma and “lazy” when searching the internet for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11007"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11106,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11007\/revisions\/11106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}