The Carrot Cabana

Each year for several now, I have sown a fall/winter succession of carrots. They grow well in the cooler days of Fall here. And in late December, during the darkest days of the year, it is an emotional and gastronomic delight to dig up iridescent orange carrots out of the ground, when everything else has returned to dust.

This year it is hot as hell. My weather station logs go back to 2014. Three of the past four days have broken the high temperature record for September for all of that decade. Now, while 100F is downright balmy compared to what some of my friends have suffered this year, it still looks like the Grim Reaper from the poor carrot’s point of view.

So I’ve rigged up what I call The Carrot Cabana. I installed four hoops over the carrot bed and clipped light row-cover fabric to the hoops. Specialized shade cloth would be even better – it doesn’t trap heat like row-cover – but the 4-6 inch gap around the bottom seems to do the job for air circulation. So far so good.

Fall Carrots

We were blessed
to be born in our time.
A post-war surge of optimism
creativity
with pestilence held at arms length
until we were old enough to take exception.
Futile as that proved to be.

Not fall carrots
facing ground in the heat.
They must take exception
germinating
against desiccation from the beginning
hoping for care from the end of a garden hose.
Trusting it will keep raining.