Previously, I've waited to dig our carrots until November, but this year I had a reason to move sooner.  Rye did well last year as a late-planted cover crop, so I've been pushing to find bare ground to finish up my 50-pound bag before the end of rye-planting season (a few weeks after the first frost).  Carrot beds looked like perfect rye habitat, so out come the carrots and in go the cover crops.

In case you're curious, I only made it about halfway through my buckwheat challenge, but I've already passed that mark in my bag of rye.  It's been a cool, wet year and the spot I most wanted to improve was too waterlogged for buckwheat.  Oh well --- any extra organic matter is better than none.

Can you tell I got sidetracked less than a third of the way through the carrot harvest and went to help Mark troubleshoot the ATV?  I'll dig the rest today (barring other pressing projects) and stock the carrots away in the fridge root cellar for the winter.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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