On Sunday, December 7th, we had our Carrot Day Celebration at 41 Western Ave here in Hull. We had 24 folks from around the neighborhood who came to join us at 12:30. We picked the time and day in conjunction with youth sports schedules and, of course, the weather and the frost.

In November in Hull, there was only one night where the temperature fell below 32° Fahrenheit — the 23rd at 31°. Below is a chart of the cold temperatures in Hull for the two weeks from November 30th to December 13th.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
30 32°	1 28°	2 28°	3 18°	4 12°	5 28°	6 31°
7 31°	8 17°	9 14°	10 32°	11 25°	12 22°	13 27°

I came home early on Wednesday, December 3rd, and went straight to the garden. I harvested some of the parsley, sorrel, and dill, a little bit of the mint, and all of the lettuce, chard, and beets. I expected that the kale would be okay, so I left it alone. I was wrong, and two weeks later, the cold has gotten the kale, and I should have harvested that too.

I had harvested arugula and tomatoes the weekend before, and that would be their final gathering of 2025. That harvest and the pickings of December 3rd gave us the ingredients for amazing December salads. We ate those salads composed of home-grown butter lettuce and the wild arugula, with tomatoes, and depending on the day, carrots or beets. The garden gives gifts here in Hull deep into December.

Over the next few days, I announced to neighbors that we would have Carrot Day on Sunday, the 7th. I wrote some emails, I knocked on doors, and while one neighborhood family was away that weekend and could not come, 12:30 was chosen as the time we would gather. Katy had warned me that the neighborhood kids were getting older and I should try to find some families with younger children, or soon the 41 Western gathering would dwindle. Fortunately, one of my neighbors is a real connector, and she invited a family with children of seven, five, and three. Rather than dwindle, we had the largest gathering at 41 Western Ave for Carrot Day ever. 

It is a simple concept. Wait for frost, gather folks, and celebrate by eating carrots. The carrots really are good, and the party is fun. In our neighborhood, it has become a seasonal tradition. The only thing involved now is picking carrots, washing them, eating them, and being and talking with friends. This was the second year without the tire swing, and it seems forgotten by the kids.

We really had a wonderful hour. The sun was out. There was no wind. Folks lingered. Middle schoolers ate carrots and talked for more than half an hour. The younger children asked for and got more carrots. The adult neighbors talked and ate carrots, and everyone said the carrots were really good. I agree, they really were exceptionally good. After about an hour, the carrots were eaten, and folks went home. As the family with the three young children left for home, the five-year-old told her mom, “They were better than cake.”

That is the idea for Carrot Day. Get people, especially children, to realize just how good a vegetable can be. This five-year-old was more open than most about vegetables — both her parents and her grandparents have gardens. At five, she already knows how good a vegetable can be. But it sure made me feel good to hear about her judgment and to see everybody having a good time and eating carrots. For me, seeing a range of folks from 3 to 70 happily eating sweet just-picked “frost-kissed-carrots” and talking about how good they are, and then just hanging out together in the yard and on the street for almost an hour, — WOW.

Carrot Day Massachusets is a small thing, but it is enough. 

Eight years ago, when I started this blog, I thought that there would be more and more schools every year that would follow the tradition that began at South Shore Charter Public School almost 30 years ago. The tradition of planting carrot seeds in the spring garden with students and then harvesting and celebrating with them in the late fall. School Children at School Gardens across states would be celebrating Carrot Day in late fall. I thought there would be hundreds of schools where, after the frost, students would be eating “frost-kissed-carrots.”  This year there may have been some schools celebrating growing and eating carrots, but I don’t know of a single school that celebrated Carrot Day. Eight years ago, I also thought the chefs and growers would take this on, and the added value of the “frost-kiseed-carrot” would be known far and wide. The benefit of cold on fall vegetables and carrots in particular is not something new. The esteemed farmer Elliot Colman grows and advertises “Candy Carrots,” which are harvested starting in December and going through the winter in Maine. But even farmers who trained at Elliot Coleman’s Four Season Farm and sell out of the local farmer’s market in Hingham and grow winter carrots don’t market them as special.

There are lots of reasons Carrot Day has not caught on as I thought it would, and of course, it still may, but I am at peace with these blog posts and our small carrot celebrations. Schools are complicated organizations that run on a set calendar and when Carrot Day happens is determined by the weather. At a school, space, time, and schedule drive events. Even at the school where I teach, we have not had a Carrot Day for the last two years. The school made a decision to remove garden beds to give more room for kids to play sports. We had three or four fun years of Carrot Day at CCSC, but not this year. June Fontaine, who carried on the Carrot Day tradition at South Shore after I left that school, retired. It may come back at South Shore, but not this year. Jonny Belber of Holly Hill Farm tells me he does not know of any Carrot Day Celebrations in local schools. He wrote to me that he will spend some of his winter time,
“Trying to plan and get a bunch of schools and other places planted for, “frost-kissed-carrots,’ statewide.” 

Another tricky thing about Carrot Day is the weather. Each year, the cold comes on in different ways. Some years it comes on slow, but this year it came fast. In Hull we had a couple of 31/32° nights in November and then suddenly in Early December, the temperatures dropped to 12° and froze the top of the soil. Frost is good for a carrot’s flavor, but being in frozen soil is not.  The freezing alters the carrots’ texture and then they do not store well. Not a simple thing for a farmer to plan on and for a chef to organize a menu around a perfectly “frost-kissed-carrot.” Maybe one of the reasons a “frost-kissed-carrots” are so good is that they are rare.

Carrots on the left from Concord, NH, harvested on December 2nd. Molly grew these from last year’s seeds. I missed the other colors this year. The other three are grown by Jenny in Windsor, VT, on November 6th, and brought to Baltimore for Thanksgiving.

Top left and middle, Kendra’s dad havested these in Harwich MA, November 20th, Jonny’s fork digging carrots in Cohasset MA early December, Bottom left Lam’s or Ning’s hand in Weymouth, MA, December 3rd, and the Hull carrot bed before its harvest on December 7th

Here are the reports from friends who grew carrots. Some only grew a few, while the Potters out in Minnesota grew 1,100 pounds of carrots. But all declared that the carrots were good and that they had fun.

These words correspond to the pictures from the top left: Molly and I corresponded about when to pick the carrots, and she asked when to harvest, and this was my advice: “Yes, wait on your carrots, but you can thin them now and have a few to eat now.  I have been doing that, and they are good.  But the bulk of them should wait, and they grow really well in the fall.” Then she reported on October 10th, “Hi Ted, we got a frost last night! Should I pick all the carrots or can they stay in the ground while I pick them gradually?” I advised gradually as multiple cold nights improve the flavor of the carrots. On December 3rd she wrote from Concord NH, “I got spooked with all the snow yesterday and picked them all, what a wonderful harvest!” Jenny wrote, “They taste like a dream carrot! I was going to share the first one with Walker, but then it disappeared before I could stop myself.” Then she brought some Vermont “frost-kissed-carrots” to Thanksgiving in Baltimore, and she reported that her mom says, “Delicious! These carrots are so sweet.” Kendra wrote, “My kids ate them but didn’t get to harvest this year. They are both in high school, and life is insanely busy, as I am sure you remember.” Jonny wrote, “Frost-kissed-carrots” coming out of the Farm Food Pantry garden at Holly Hill Farm for donation to local food pantries. December sweetness cheer.” Lam wrote, “Thanks for the carrot seeds. We put down the seeds late this year, beginning of July, and we still have some little nice carrots.”

Nancy Potter wrote me: “We hope everyone has as wonderful a carrot harvest as we did. It was a perfect day!” Please watch the bounty of their labor in this 3-minute video, where through time-lapse film, you can see all the carrots come out of the ground and move toward cold storage. So impressive to see all that work and all that food grown the way food should be grown.

The four pictures below are from the Hull Garden on the day before the Winter Solstice, December 20th, 2025. When I wrote you in late October, I explained that I was pulling the rattlesnake beans in hopes of Christmas radishes and February arugula. The two pictures on the right show the cold frame, the baby arugula, and the radishes. The radish will not be ready by Christmas, but the arugula is looking set for a late winter harvest; see the tiny flecks of green evenly spaced below the radishes, those are all arugula sprouts!

May you all eat well and keep your hopes up in 2026! If you can garden!

Six and a half weeks ago, I wrote to you about turning 65 and compared that stage of life to the Mid-September Garden. The Hull Garden in the weeks since has continued to grow good food: lots of tomatoes, lots of kale and chard, some arugula and lettuce, a few cucumbers and zucchini, and lots of Rattlesnake Pole Beans. I have been indulging in an occasional carrot. Perhaps I am selectively thinning the carrots to give those remaining more room to grow, or I could just be a bit impatient and eager to eat a good carrot. Anyway, for just the two of us, the garden continues to produce almost all of our vegetables. If you say a garden’s life span is 52 weeks and a person’s life span is 95 years (both well above average), then these weeks are the equivalent to about twelve years of a life. I certainly hope my next twelve years are as productive as the garden’s last six and a half weeks have been.

That said, each day, conditions for growth here in the Hull Garden lessen, but there are about five more weeks where plants will continue to grow. I just decided this morning to pull the Rattlesnake Beans, even though there are a few buds and some very tender young beans, but it is a matter of diminishing returns. I figure if I pull them today and put down a cold frame and plant some radish, arugula, and parsley seeds, we could be rewarded with Christmas radishes and February arugula and April parsley.

The Rattlesnake Beans have been my favorite crop this year. Not only have they been the visual anchor of the garden, growing to almost eight feet high and producing a steady crop of beans from the first week of August until this week, but they have been giving us amazing food and amazing experiences. Among those experiences were the times with our grandsons here in Hull. One week this summer, I was the lead daytime caregiver for the one-year-old Robinson. In that week, Robinson and I spent a lot of time moving together as he fearlessly improved his proto-walking skills and his stair climbing and stair descent work. We spent hours on the porch and going up and down the front porch stairs to the garden. When we got to the bottom, we often nestled in the shade of the pole beans and ate beans. Not only that, but his older brother Izzy also liked to eat beans, and when he got back to Baltimore Izzy relished telling his dad his beans were not as good as mine. There was also the party on the porch in September when Ruth said that the blanched Rattlesnake Beans were the best beans she had ever eaten, and she has lived her life eating excellent home-grown vegetables. The bean dish we had last night with Rattlesnake Beans at five stages of maturity, from dried to tender (see photo in gallery below), will have to be enough. The textures of the five stages in a rice and bean dish were amazing. It was not a dish for a parent of young children or a grandparent with company, but as someone who loves their beans all that extra time sorting, pulling strings, and making stock (from the dried and drying shells), was time happily spent.

Rattlesnake Beans are an old variety. They originate in the American Southwest, where the Hopi People grew the bean, and they are also revered by the Cherokee, who have the seed stored in their seed bank. It is hard for me to give up the handful of beans that will not come in the next few days, but the thought of Christmas radishes and late winter arugula and early spring parsley overrides that emotion, and as soon as I finish this draft, I will pull them.

As I said, the past six and a half weeks have been good in the garden. We have had plenty of rain and plenty of sun. But some of the success has to do with the compost tea. In June, I gathered rotted seaweed from the beach and halfway filled a 32-gallon trash can with that rotting seaweed, and then topped off the barrel with water from a hose. For the last 19 weeks, I have been taking compost tea from that barrel. I carefully put the tea on the specific plants in the garden, and then later I add the water left over from washing vegetables or the grandkids’ bathing pool back into the barrel to restock the tea. It has never been empty these last four months. I think this tea has made a world of difference, especially for the beans and the greens. Early on, the tea was at times too strong, but its potency has lessened over time, and now I freely add the tea without fear of burning the plants with too much nitrogen. I plan to use compost tea next year, even though I will not neglect the garden as I did after the November 2024 Election.

The pictures below, taken in the garden today, show the plants that love or tolerate this season. Clockwise from top left: Italian Parsley, Red Russian Kale, Rainbow Swiss Chard with Buttercrunch Lettuce, Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomatoes, Red Torch Tomatoes still hanging on, and the yellow watering can with compost tea. That tea is still a nice brown color and still has a rich smell, even with the 19 weeks of dilution.

Those vegetables persist, but the sorrel and the mint are thriving as we approach November, and along with the arugula (there is a bee on the arugula flower in the photo below), are still going strong for the pollinators.

Please send me your carrot updates. I have heard that there has been frost in New Hampshire and in Minnesota. This is what Nancy Potter said about the Minnesota carrots captured in the photograph of her and Steve on October 23rd as they harvested a few of their carrots, “Our carrots have definitely been frosted–it was 27 degrees this morning. The root cellar is a long way from being cold enough, so digging all the carrots is still in the future.” In about six more weeks, I hope to be posting the year-end edition of the 2025 Carrot Day Massachusetts Blog, and I would love to include your carrot adventures in that post, so stay in touch.

In early August, Katy and I celebrated our 39th Anniversary. That night I said to her we would not have another 39 years together, and she laughed and agreed. This past week, I turned 65.

On Saturday morning I was working/being/hanging in the garden strategizing how to get the most out of the garden this year. Vegetable gardening is largely a question of what to do when, and there are lots of small decisions like when a crop should be removed for the next to take its place. To garden is to make many moves, some as small as harvesting kale leaves so lettuce plants nearby get more light, or deciding that it is time to pull the beets and put in the radishes, or pull the radishes to put in the beets.

One thing I decided on Saturday was to use some more of the compost tea on the cucumbers and beans. I was hoping that the compost tea would encourage the Rattlesnake Pole Beans and the Shintokiwa Long-Fruited Cucumbers to keep going. While they, like me, are past their peak, they, like me, are still productive. If I were to make the decision that their season is over, it is very unlikely that whatever I planted to take their place now in mid-September will produce much. Both beans and cukes have had amazing seasons. We have had beans for the past five weeks and cucumbers for the past six, and I hope they keep going strong. Not only for us to eat but to share. You see, I have a short term goal to eat beans and cucumbers this weekend because Ruth, the daughter of old friend and Carrot Day Massachusetts blog guest writer Nancy Potter, is coming to lunch and to see the garden. I want to be sure she gets some beans and cucumbers. 

The fact that there are still new flowers on both the cucumbers and beans, and that there are young beans and cucumbers are promising signs we will have something more to eat this weekend. The brown leaves and waning vigor of the plants are real too, and they will not last forever.

Decisions in the garden are not only about when but “where.” This year more than any I remember “where” has made a huge difference. This year I had dramatically different results from the same type of plants in different places. The Shintokiwa Long-Fruited Cucumber trellis in one spot has produced about 80 beautiful cucumbers, while the other trellis has produced two not so beautiful cucumbers. The trellises are near each other, only ten feet or so apart. But these photographs below tell the story. I know of course it is the soil; look at the different shades of green.

Not only were the cucumbers more numerous from one trellis than the other, they were longer and better. I had hoped that the less productive trellis might have a later season but it is not to be as the productive one still has more small fruit. Same is true for the tomatoes as the plants on one side of that path are out producing (my guess is by ten fold) what is happening on the other side of the path. I had thought the slow starters might have a better late season but that is not coming to pass as they are ending sooner too.

This past Saturday, while I was harvesting and thinking about the near-term harvests for the next few weeks, I was also looking forward to the fall garden. It is not all that different from thinking about being 65. Katy and my children have been born and grown up and are living their full lives on their own. I am still working in a school and teaching, and while much of what I will ever learn has been learned, there is more to learn and do. This season’s garden is at the stage I am in life right now. Like the garden I have done much of my season’s or life’s work but not all and perhaps not the most important part.

As I was doing that thinking and gardening and planning I thought about what I was good at in the garden. My first answer was harvesting. I spend more time harvesting food, than planting, weeding, watering, or tending. I think of myself as being good at harvesting but I decided on Saturday morning that what I might be even better at than harvesting is just being in the garden. Making those small decisions, chatting with neighbors as they pass my front yard garden, pulling weeds, cutting arugula and harvesting. I love just being in the garden and also writing about being in the garden.

I am still learning and adjusting. Right now my biggest adjustment is when to pick the tomatoes. Yesterday I decided that a big Brandywine tomato should wait another day on the vine. In years past I would have thought it was three or four days from perfection but as so many of the tomatoes have been eaten by animals (when only barely ripe) I knew I should pick it soon. The next morning I learned that I was too late as I saw that an animal had pulled it off the plant and eaten half of it.  It had eaten the ripe half. That Saturday morning decision not to pick that tomato was the wrong decision. Because of that learning I picked the Brandywine in the photo on the right (the lower one behind the leaf with just a touch of pink) and it is ripening well under a dish towel in the kitchen. We always need to be adjusting.

May your fall garden and your carrots keep growing. After four adjustments to the fence around the carrots, I think I have it right now, and it will continue to keep the bunnies out. Looking forward to that December Day when the neighborhood kids come over and we eat carrots. Please tell me how your carrots and garden are doing.

Well, I planted the carrot seeds on Juneteenth, as has been my practice the last three years. It felt good to get the seeds in the ground on such an important day. Hope that all goes well.  

As I got ready to prepare the bed, I was disappointed in the look of the cover plants. As I pulled them before putting in the carrot seeds, their color of light green with small leaves, was a sign that something was amiss with the soil.  They did not have that robust, healthy look that I like to see in the garden. There was one small section where things looked better, but overall, the plants did not look right. As I have written here before, I neglected the garden and did not put on the usual layer of seaweed in the late fall/early winter, and it showed.

There have been piles of seaweed at the beach, pushed up by storms in May, that have been there for about a month. A week before, I had gathered the top dried layer of seaweed and used it as a bunny barrier at the base of two of my fenced-off areas after I noticed that the bunnies were burrowing under the fences. On Juneteenth, I determined that I would take a fork and gather from these same piles, but get the smelly decomposing underbelly of the piles. It was too late to amend the soil by mulching the surface with seaweed and allowing the natural processes of the living organisms in the soil to bring the nutrients down from the surface to where the plants’ roots will use them. What I could do was to make some compost tea. Which I did by gathering the mucky seaweed and filling a garbage barrel with water and stirring it around, and then filling watering cans with the resulting tea.

I did notice that the poured tea had an impact on my pole beans, as there were a few leaves from the beans that got burned from too much of a good thing. Anyway, time will tell, but it felt good to be pouring brown water onto the seeded carrot bed, and next winter I will do better.

The light of June is so good for growing, and the arugula and the lettuce are center stage. Where a month ago it took time and labor to pick a salad, (more time than going to the store) now, day after day, the garden makes more than Katy and I can eat, even when we have three parties in three days, with the main feature of the meals being salad. The garden is now saving us time, and it is the time of sharing the harvest with family, friends, and neighbors.

Hope you remember, as you plant, tend, and weed your garden, that the days of the easy and glorious harvest can come. While there are months of tending between now and the frost, I am hoping and working to keep the carrots safe from the rabbits, in nutritious soil and I expect I will need to water and perhaps use some more compost tea.