It’s been many months since I wrote an entry here, and we’re now just a week or so before Christmas. This year’s summer months with a flower-filled garden feels like years away, and next year’s even further.

Despite this, there’s still some produce to harvest – while the Parsnip ‘F1 Gladiator’ remain in the ground (I sowed these back in March, but I’ll harvest one for Christmas dinner), the Carrot ‘Sweet Imperator Mix F1’ and Carrot ‘Flyaway F1 Hybrid’ are still harvesting nicely. They served me well last year too.

They’re mixed results – with some great big nice carrots, in with some wildly twisted ones, and some little tiddlers, but that means nothing when you’ve got them in the pot and cooking.

As soon as I’ve plucked them from the raised bed, they smell amazing. The carrot tops smell lovely as they flail helpless, and the carrots themselves smell delicious.

Once they’ve been cooked and served up you can really taste the difference between them and the kind of carrots you buy from the local supermarket. I don’t know if it’s the intense farming or the variety that makes those so bland, but these home grown carrots are just fantastic.

Another thing to note, is that with these mixed colours, I think that the white, yellow, and purple ones all taste distinctively different – with the purple one tasting the richest.

One thing I have realised, given the number of curly carrots this year, is that maybe my raised bed is too nutrient rich for them. There’s no stones lurking in there, but maybe there’s also no incentive for the carrots to reach down looking for nutrients – so they end up throwing roots everywhere nearer the surface?

Either way, they’ve been delicious, and there’s still plenty in the ground yet for dinner, although I’ll want to lift them before the hard frosts freeze them in and the begin to rot.