Garden Carrots

The summer garden season is coming to a close. The cucumbers were made into pickles, or eaten in salads. The corn was plucked too early. the melons have disappeared one by one to either squirrels or neighborhood children - we're not sure which. The tomato plant succumbed to the cold and died. All that was left in the garden plot were the carrots, and I picked those this morning.

I never know what kind of carrots I'm going to get out of our garden. Usually they are small, short, stubby things. This year I tried planting them farther apart, hoping that giving them more space to grow would produce larger ones.

I still got an assortment of tiny, fishy looking carrots. (For reference, the long one in the middle is 4" from head to tail, and 3/4" in diameter at the widest point.)

However, I did get one beauty of a carrot, almost twice as long as the carrots I usually get. (The ones on the right below are about the usual "big" size, about 3 1/2" - 4" long, and 1 1/4" diameter. The long one on the left is the same diameter, but 6" long!)

I also got this mutant double-ended carrot.

And this monstrosity. It is all of 3" in diameter, and about 4" long. I wonder what made it twist itself up like that???