Why You Should Thin Your Carrots [Gardening]

So this is apparently why you should thin your carrots. In case you were wondering.

I was just trying to pull out one carrot, but these obviously had gotten close.

I wasn't even expecting full-blown, ready-to-eat carrots to come up. Just the spindly little roots that had come up the last time thinning my carrots crossed my mind. But nope, it's officially carrot season. At least they're a little more thinned out now.

What else is in? Peas are gone, but I've had my first tomatoes!

Just the cherry ones. The others – Celebrity, Mortgage Lifter and Brandywine Yellow – are still quite green. And not even fried green tomatoes ready. Definitely not 'mater saminch ready.

The eggplant is getting close to ready. I will be cooking the heck out of some eggplant parmesan. And probably grilled eggplant, too. If some animal doesn't get it before I do.

Speaking of purple veggies, we did have radishes. Well, we had a couple of radishes. As in, two. I think this was another problem related to me not realizing how much root vegetables need to be thinned.

Yes, peas in the background. Yum, but again, not enough. Next year, I may need to adjust the placement of my trellis.

The radishes did make for a good salad. (That's my lettuce mix, too.)

And now we will discuss casualties.

I did have some jalapeno peppers growing....

...but they fell off. They had some sort of brown ickiness on them anyway, so I guess it was for the best. My ancho pepper plant looks great, but no sign of any peppers.

I think the jalapenos died because they were being overshadowed by my squash and zucchini plants. I mean, they are ginourmous, taking up nearly half the bed. And that's just TWO plants.

We did have some yellow crookneck squash, but today I found it off the plant in the bed covered in some gross fuzz that made me glad I was wearing gloves. Squash beetles, maybe? I saw a bug, which startled me, so I threw it to the end of the backyard. Except I accidentally threw it over the fence. Sorry, neighbors.

(Don't worry, no photos of the gross, fuzzy yellow squash.)

However, we are overrun with zucchini. I think the current zucchini is going to turn into chocolate zucchini bread, but in the meantime, we've gotten creative. Zucchini tacos, anyone?

We sauteed the zucchini with cilantro-lime rotel, to make up for that we also used fresh tomato juice (canned by my mom), onions, garlic, cumin, crushed red pepper and fresh cilantro. Then we added the veggie mixture to ground beef, leaving in a separate pan the leftover tomato juice, which we reduced down ith some habanero sauce. And then put the whole mess into a tortilla and covered it in freshly grated cheese (Chipotle Cheddar from Kenny's Farmhouse).

(And then we sat down to watch True Blood on demand, and five seconds into that, we were reminded that you can't eat and watch that show.)

Anyway, it was delicious. I was originally going to make a casserole, but one commenter left an oh-so-helpful message that she sauteed the mixture and wrapped it up in a tortilla. Genius.

Of course, it's good we like zucchini, because we sure have plenty. That, and our mutant carrots.