Homegrown Carrot with Carrot Flower

“When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers, and how you built a tower tumbling through the trees in holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet.” — The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1 lyrics by Neutral Milk Hotel

This year we decided to grow a few vegetables on our deck at home. I bought The Container Garden, a mix of organic vegetable and herb seeds that would work with the planter garden that I had in mind. We planted, grew, and ate delicious, fresh baby carrots, radishes, cucumbers, lettuce, and red potatoes.

There is nothing like pulling your own homegrown veggies right out of the soil. Honestly, our vegetables were so ridiculously vibrant and fresh having just been harvested that they practically glowed! Keith and I agreed that homegrown is much better than even the fresh, organic produce we buy at the market.

What struck me most about this little project was the fact that I have eaten a lot of vegetables in my day, but I don’t really know what a lot of the leaves and flowers of many of the plants I eat look like. For example, do you know what a potato plant looks like, above it’s potato-y roots? I’d never really thought about it, but by growing my own potatoes I learned that potato plants are lush and green with beautiful flowers. Carrot flowers are particularly lovely, as well! They bloomed for along time, which made the buzzing bees very happy.

Carrot Fact: Carrots were at first not cultivated as food, but as medicine for a variety of ailments.

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