Titanarum

Carrots, aren’t you sick of them? Or is that just me? Every bloomin’ time I try to grow them I end up disappointed. And it isn’t because I expect the impossible. I know I’m unlikely to have those beautifully long tapered things you see on the packets because I don’t put each seed in a foot long plastic tube immersed in hand mixed sandy soil (that is how the winner of best carrots of the last 20 allotment show grows them). I know my little carrots roots are up against stones and clay clumps and what not on their way down. I know they will be bent. And because I don’t thin them very well I’m under no illusion they will fulfil their individual potential. All I ask is that they are carrot root fly free and taste the way a fresh carrot ought to: sweet. But they never. Even when I’ve gone to all sorts of trouble, like digging first and reading up on the kind of soil and nutrients they like, I am rewarded – not! – with gnarly growths void of flavour and often riddled with the larvae of the carrot fly despite the variety being supposed to be resistant. I give up.