#1109 – Root
Posted on September 10, 2010 at 12:00 am by Chris
Chapter: Comics
We grew a bunch of vegetables in the back yard when I was a kid. I was really excited the year we planted carrots. Carrots were something that I enjoyed eating on a regular basis. Tomatoes and cucumbers and such were mainly for my mom’s salads. Since they grew under the ground I had many fantasies about how amazingly awesome the carrots would be but all we got were tiny shriveled abstractions of a carrot. Like a 3 year old’s crayon drawing come to life.
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giant carrots anyone they make baby carrots not worth dipping your money into
Comics like these, with hilarious pictures whose humor is multiplied exponentially by hilarious captions, make my day.
I have heard (this is not a CONFIRMED statement) that the bigger carrots get IE: Older, in the ground the tougher they are, get more woody and hard [Citation Needed]
Like I said, Im not sure, but if that IS the case, those would be terrible Carrots.
…Did Biff make a blanket for himself out of the leaves?
I feel the “Years everyone got sick of carrots” caption. One year we planted two cucumber bushes thinking, one, two dozen from the both of them. Nope. Every day for three months we were picking five or six off at a time! We made pickles, jarred them and ate them on salads or just gave them away. At the end we were begging people to take them!
Those would sure make weightlifting a lot more fun, though.
Vegetable gardening can involve all the emotions (or so I’ve been told).
@Caranthir: Yeah, cucumbers will do that. Just be glad you didn’t plant zucchinis.
Or squash*.
Old carrots are indeed ‘woodier’ – IME, anyway. We didn’t get tiny carrots, we got mongo-mutant ones, with three or four spikes, or branching spikes, and all manner of odd shapes. They were fun!
* Our cucumbers and zucchini did the same thing as the others mentioned, as did our pumpkins and watermellons. You’d think the ground had never had a chance to grow anything before, and the garden just went nutz!
My sympathies on your poor crop. Perhaps you didn’t get the fertilizers or what-not correct? Seems like the sort of thing that would have worked out better the second time around (in the same place), after some research. Then again, maybe the research was done and revealed that it wasn’t worth it to try carrots again.
Yup, we did the same with zucchini, planted one plant, hardly got anything, it just produced a few tiny, sorry looking things. So the next year we planted three. Big mistake, we got probably close to a hundred, and many of them were doing a good impression of a baseball bat, they were huge. Everybody in my family and social group got free zucchini that year.
If the carrot tops were normal size you probably just needed to wait longer for the roots to develop. Carrots take a long time. If you mean you got a full sized root but it was misshapen, then it needs softer soil from humus/organic material/peat/etc. If it forked then it got too much nitrogen.
Garden carrots are awesome btw. You should try again. The main challenge is getting them to sprout. If you already have that down then the rest is easy. Just takes a long time. Hmm, it’s already september. I should get started myself.
Yes, there are some plants you shouldn’t plant unless you’re prepared to leave a batch of zucchini on your neighbor’s doorstep, ring the doorbell, and RUN!
We always got mutant carrots. At one point I think we had one that was more like three tried to grow from the same top.
Our main problem was spinach and broccoli. As in, too much of it. I know spinach is good for you and all, but three armfuls (Dad-sized armfuls) a week is a bit much.
Every time we grow something in our garden, it will either go nuts (spinach, broccoli, parsely, curry plant) or struggle along for a few weeks then die (everything else). The soil here is heavy clay though so everything drowns in winter. I think it would be easier if we just stuck to pots.
Out of proportion week!
My mom and her mother call the shriveled gross looking carrots witches fingers.
Did you know Carrots were originally Purple?? It’s true…