Planting Carrots, Beets, and Okra
I am always so happy to have fresh, organic produce growing at the farm - everything I grow is shared with family and friends, used for video and print shoots, and saved for making my delicious daily green juice.
This year, we're all especially excited about the new vegetable garden. Everything is growing so beautifully. While we have many vegetables already mature and ready for picking, planting is always done in succession - meaning we drop new seeds every 7 to 21 days in order to maintain a consistent supply of harvestable produce throughout the season. Last week, my head gardener, Ryan McCallister, planted new crops of carrots and beets, as well as an entire bed of okra. Seeds came from two of our favorite sources, Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.
Enjoy these photos.
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- My gardeners are constantly checking the progress in the vegetable garden and seeding every couple of weeks, so we always have something to pick. On this day, Ryan planted more carrots, beets, and a new bed of okra.
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- Meanwhile, look at the growing cabbages! These are the most beautiful we’ve ever had – each one more perfect than its neighbor. And they’re so big!
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- Here’s one of our cauliflower heads. Cauliflower is slow-growing, needing 100 days, or three months, to reach maturity. Unlike broccoli, which has a domed head of tightly packed edible flower buds, a cauliflower head has dense, curd-like plant tissues with a soft texture and mildly sweet, nutty flavor.
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- And here’s just one of the heads of broccoli growing. Recently, I picked a head of broccoli that was more than two and a half pounds.
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- And this is is a Napa cabbage – another big beauty.
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- In this bed, we have our growing carrots. The tops are already quite tall. It will be a few more weeks before we harvest any carrots, but it’s a good time to seed the back half of the bed, so there is another fresh crop following this one.
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- Ryan uses this bed preparation rake from Johnny’s Selected Seeds to create furrows in the soil. Hard plastic red tubes slide onto selected teeth of the rake to mark the rows. The furrows don’t have to be deep. In general, seeds should be planted at a depth of two times the width, or diameter, of the actual seed. A seed that’s about 1/16-of-an-inch thick should be planted an eighth-of-an-inch deep.
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- These seeds will be planted about an inch deep. Among the carrot varieties, these are Yellowstone pelleted carrot seed. These carrots will have six to eight inch long roots and a deeper color than most other yellow carrot varieties.
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- Ryan plants the seeds in rows that are about a foot apart. All the beds are raised slightly and all surrounded by wood frames – more than 40 beds in this half-acre garden. Raised bed gardening allows good drainage, prevents soil compaction, and provides protection for those plants that may otherwise get trampled.
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- Here are the seeds dropped along the length of the furrow. We always plant a variety of carrots in all the different colors – red, yellow, white, purple, black, and orange.
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- Then Ryan carefully back fills all the furrows in the bed until all the seeds are covered with soil.
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- In this bed, Ryan creates more rows for beets. Look at the growing beets at the end – so lush and green. I grow beets through the year. Beets are sweet and tender – and one of the healthiest foods. Beets contain a unique source of phytonutrients called betalains, which provide antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and detoxification support.
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- Here, Ryan writes out small markers, so we can keep track of what varieties are growing and which ones we want to grow again.
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- Many of our seeds come from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in central Maine – a company I’ve been using for quite some time. Johnny’s Selected Seeds is a privately held, employee-owned organic seed producer. Johnny’s offers hundreds of varieties of organic vegetable, herb, flower, fruit and farm seeds that are known to be strong, dependable growers.
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- Here are the beet seeds in the palm of Ryan’s hand. It’s hard to believe these tiny seeds produce such beautiful vegetables within weeks. We grow both red and gold beets.
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- Here he is dropping the seeds into the bed. The beetroot is the taproot of the beet plant, and is often called the table beet, garden beet, red or golden beet or simply… beet. Beets are highly nutritious and very good for maintaining strong cardiovascular health. It’s low in calories, contains zero cholesterol, and is rich in folates, vitamin-A, B-complex, and antioxidants.
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- Once all the seeds are dropped, Ryan uses a soft rake to back fill again until all the seeds are covered. We should see sprouts within the next week.
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- And then in this bed, Ryan makes two big trenches for our okra seeds. When planting okra, Space okra plants at least 10 inches apart in a very sunny area that has fertile, well-drained soil.
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- We have a variety of okra seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. Started in 1998 as a hobby, it has since grown into North America’s largest heirloom seed company. I love okra, but for some, okra is too slimy when cooked. Okra is very healthy, however – it’s high in fiber, vitamin-C and full of antioxidants.
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- Ryan plants the okra seeds about 1/2 to 1 inch deep and at least several inches apart in a row. These plants need room to grow.
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- Once they germinate, Ryan will check the young sprouts and pull any that seem to be too weak or not growing properly.
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- Ryan covers the rows with soil and then gives everything a good drink. Here, okra can be seeded into the garden as late as July and still produce a good late-summer crop.
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- This garden looks prettier every day. I am so happy with its progress. How are your vegetables doing this season?
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