when gardening goes wrong

our first foray into vegetable gardening this summer has been mostly successful. we had a lovely crop of zucchini (in fact, we ate one tonight!), many cherry tomatoes, and oodles of mint/basil/chives. our cucumbers...meh. kinda small and misshapen. the sweetpeas? not so much. but nothing.... NOTHING... compares to our carrots.

(WARNING: if grossly mutant vegetables ick you out, you may want to move along...)


people, we have about 30 of these things planted in our garden and so far the 4 or so we've pulled have all looked like this! the only reasons i can come up with are: 1) we planted them too close together and 2) our soil is pretty much pure clay and it hardens like crazy when it dries out.

i can just imagine those poor wittle carrots trying to bust down into the soil and basically being confronted with concrete-like conditions. they didn't have a chance.

anyone wanna join us for sugar-glazed frankencarrots???