Crop of the year

I am hoping this will be the year of the carrot. Each year, some vegetables do amazingly well, most are fine, and a few struggle. They can struggle for various reasons. It could be weather; either too cold or too hot. It could be a pest or disease problem. Or sometimes, a crop may be not be prioritized in the long list of things to do. The last few years, carrots have been a struggling vegetable for us. When we’ve had them, they’ve been great, but we didn’t have many. There were a few reasons that fell in the pest and priority categories. First, seed germination was low, because of an insect pest that seed growers faced. It was hard to get a good, full bed of carrots growing. Then, we didn’t prioritize weeding, and the carrots had to fight the weeds on their own, which didn’t turn out well. Finally, last year was a terrible year for voles and field mice (terrible for us, great for the voles and field mice). Many of our carrots were eaten by voles and field mice before we could get to them. The result was, we didn’t have a lot of carrots.

This year, we are off to a good start with our carrots. We still are facing low germination rates with the carrots, because of the same insect problem for the seed growers, but we are planting more carrots to make up for that. We are also trying very hard to keep up with weeding. So far, our first four plantings of carrots are looking good, weed-wise. Finally, we think the vole and field mouse population has crashed. Their population tends to grow and crash on an seven year cycle (increase each year, then crash the seventh year). Last year was year ten of growth, about time for a crash. The result: we have carrots this week! We’re keeping our fingers crossed for the rest of the season!