Baby Carrots?

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Well, I pulled up the carrots finally... didn't I tell you I took out the regular sized carrots mid-season and transplated them with baby carrots? No, well if you don't believe me, just have a look!
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I knew they weren't going to work out - I'd pulled one or two of them up over the past couple of months to see how they were growing... and I seen they weren't growing well. I'm pretty sure it's the same problem that caused The Great Radish Famine of 2014: I didn't leave nearly enough spacing between the plants, which caused them to choke out the growth. Next year I will follow the spacing directions on the packages to a "T" for all of my plants. I've read elsewhere that this is one of the biggest problems with us sky-gardeners working with a limited space - you have the desire to cram as many plants into a pot as you possibly can, and in doing so you actually produce far less than you could have. Live and learn.
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The carrots tasted fairly good though. I picked a cucumber and a few of the peppers, then added them to a salad for dinner.
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Mmmm... don't those cucumber slices look absolutely delicious?

They were!

The peppers as well were good - but as you can see in the top picture, they didn't grow terribly large. This has happened to me every year so far. It would be nice if they would grow bigger, but to be honest, I'm not sure how much bigger they should be in a "natural" state. What I mean is, most food from the grocery store is genetically modified - that's why strawberries from the store are the size of a small apple but have almost no flavour, while my strawberries are much smaller but pack so much flavour there is almost no comparison. I'm sure the peppers I'm buying from the store as well are genitically modified, so, while I know my peppers should grow bigger, I don't really expect them to grow as big as the store bought ones.
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I'll tell you what I've had really good luck with though - hot peppers. They just keep producing and producing... then I pick them, and a couple more flowers show up, and soon, more peppers to pick once again. Each year now, I've had way more hot peppers than I thought I'd get - and unlike the green peppers, they always grow to a mature size.
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Also, I was able to add some nasturtium flowers to the above salad, which gives it a little bit of extra zing as well as making the salad look rather unique. It was a little late for them to bloom, since I planted them mid-season when they should have been going much earlier, but they made it! I certainly like the idea of growing edible flowers - it just seems more, ahem, "manly" to grow flowers you can eat than something girly like petunias. Next year, only edible flowers. Grrrr! You go, man!
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Left: Nasturtiums / Right: Tomatoes

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Guess what else has happened recently? My very under-producing tomato plant gave me a late season suprise and produced two more tomatoes on the big plant, and a good dozen more for the cherry tomato plant. One of the large ones is a little deformed and I don't know how much bigger they will grow anymore this late in the year, but I'll take 'em!
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