Kidney beans and carrots.

T.M. (you know, THE MOM) got me a pressure canner for Christmas, so I can can ALL the things. The first thing is light red kidney beans.

I only had two canning jars, so they were a bit overfilled. Lost a lot of water from the jars while they were in the canner. But the lids seem well-sealed and so far they haven’t exploded in the pantry, so we should be able to eat them without subsequently dying of botulism.

I finally decided to harvest the carrots. They were still growing and thriving, even with a few light freezes. However, I noticed the top of one was almost two inches across, and that seemed big enough, you know? I didn’t want to end up in the tabloids as the lady who grew the monster carrots who gained sentience and rampaged the neighborhood.

That is about 150-180 carrots. HOLY MOLEY. Unfortunately I didn’t know what I was doing when I planted them. I put the seeds in the ground last spring, so they had to do their initial growing during the string of 10,000 (or however long it was) 100+F days this summer. The only water they got for most of the year came from my daily/every other day waterings with a hose. I also planted them after sowing the rest of the garden, when I was just plain tired of putting seeds in the ground, and lazily didn’t space them far enough apart. One reason for that is I didn’t actually believe they’d grow! Obviously they proved me wrong. Sadly because of my poor gardening skills they are not a handsome bunch of carrots. A lot of the larger ones split down several parts of the root when we finally got rain and cooler weather in late fall/early winter.

And many had to fight with each other for territory:

At least, I think that’s what they’re doing. Somehow I feel vaguely scandalized…