Had to check the spelling on that one! Gardening is one of those activities that's particularly serendipitous, at least for someone like myself. Depending on how busy my winter is I start out with varying amounts of planning. Some years I start seeds indoors, some I order meticulously chosen plants from an array of catalogs, others I just wing it with whatever seeds and plants I can find locally. Those plans get modified repeatedly as the planting, tending and harvesting seasons progress. Each year is a new adventure seeing what does well, what doesn't, and what new discoveries are made.One of my "modifications" this year was to do very little thinning of my carrots and lettuce. I don't usually worry about the lettuce too much. I like to pick it small anyway, so I thin as I harvest. The carrots are a different story though. With carrots you risk small undeveloped or misformed vegetables if they're too close together. I don't mind unshapely carrots. That's a given in our rocky soil, but I do want to get enough to eat!
I ran out of time to regularly thin the carrots, partly thanks to the rainy weather. It seems whenever a pleasant morning for picking occassionally popped up over the last month or so, I was at my daytime job. Fortunately since I had done a reasonable job of thinning them early in season, they weren't prohibitively close.
The last 3 weekends I've been able to carefully pull out several handfulls of thickly bunched miniature carrots! They're perfectly ripe (I'm usually able to keep picking them into the winter when they lose some of their sweetness), perfect for salads without much slicing, if any, and they look great on the plate!
Now I just have to remember to make a note of what I did so I can do it again next year.
