It is officially summer. The last few years, I have planted the fall carrots on Juneteenth, but I was going to be away from Hull this year, so I planted the carrot seeds the weekend before.
The block of photographs above shows the Garden at 41 Western Ave on Sunday, June 28th.
Space is always an issue in the front yard garden at 41 Western Ave, and I could not figure out where to put the carrots, so I built a new bed and planted it with carrots. This new bed slightly increases the area of the garden. That, to me, is a good thing. There was no need to put up a fence right away, as the bunnies don’t eat dirt. The carrots germinated well, and it is so much easier to thin them without bending over a fence that I thinned them early and then put up the fence. It is wise to wait to thin plants until the secondary leaves have formed, but I thinned them early with only their cotyledons or seed leaves developed. Time will tell if that was a mistake.
As you can see from the photo, the carrots needed to be thinned. A carrot plant needs room to grow. The more room, the healthier they will be. In the photo, the plants with long, thin cotyledons are carrots. If you look closely, you can see some arugula cotyledons as well. They are the little round leaves. Because cotyledons are so immature, they are vulnerable. I hope I made the right decision to save labor and thin them early.
In previous posts, I have written at length about the precautions I now take that we no longer have cats to protect our gardens from bunnies. In the end, the boxes and fences have worked out well. In part it has worked because there are so many plants bunnies don’t care for: cucumber, tomatoes, zucchini, arugula, sorrel and mint. Those plants I leave unprotected, but there is one new threat this year — a doe. The young deer moved into our neighborhood on Hull Hill a few weeks ago. It has found other gardens, but so far it has not found our garden. My theory is that the deer is put off by the tansy and mint that form a barrier around the garden. It is not a physical barrier, as there is a big opening in the middle where the walkway leads from the porch stairs to the road. My guess is that it is more of a smell barrier, as the astringency of the tansy and the potency of the mint have kept the deer away. Fingers crossed it stays that way.
In other garden news, I have started to harvest mint for tea. I have made a new batch of compost tea and have started to use it when the color of a plant’s leaves is not dark enough green; a good example of plants with a weak green are the two of the cucumber plants in the photo below. Speaking of green and healthy, now is the time of the year when the purslane starts to thrive. As I get used to the plenty and the flavors of the butter lettuce and the arugula, the purslane starts to emerge. I have never once planted it, but I sure do harvest it as it emerges from the space around tomatoes and under beans, and it sure has a great crunch and wonderful flavor.
But the big news is that for the past five days the two Baltimore Grandsons have been in residence and the harvest is piling in. I leave you with this picture of a day’s harvest. I put in a toy to show scale but thought the picture was better with Izzy and RJ in it. Izzy helped me harvest the mint!
Happy gardening and please send word of how your garden and your family is doing.
Carrot Day Massachusetts 2026 