Thinning the Carrots

As I've been reading about the joys of gardening one item kept recurring and always made me chuckle....until today. The books talked and talked about the necessity of thinning out the garden plants if after they started to grow, they were too close together, in essence crowding each other out of growing to their proper vegetable size. The part that always made me snicker was how often the books said most gardeners have a really tough time thinning their harvest. Even though they know it will insure a better crop, once those little plants start growing, the gardener just can't stand pulling out that little living thing. "Really," thought I, "are these gardeners soft in the head, or what?"


So today I took a hard look at my carrots. Carrot seeds are tiny. Miniscule, really, so it is difficult to sew them without extras getting out of your hand and into the soil. The result is a crowded carrot bed. I couldn't believe how much I did NOT want to pull those little baby carrots out of the ground. I sat there and looked and thought and hemmed and hawed but eventually I knew I had to do what was good for my crop. I thinned. I apologized to the carrots the whole time. I've assured them a good spot in my next batch of chicken stock. They are almost as cute as the little baby bunny in my flower bed this morning. **Sigh**