Four-Day Carrot Harvest For 2016 (And How To Make A Million Dollars Easy)

Dateline: 22 November 2016

Those of you who have read my blog for long (or have a copy of my Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners) already know about my carrot-shade-disc-and-tri-growing idea. Once again this year I have used the technique to bring up carrot seeds faster than usual (only four days!) and to grow some beautiful carrot specimens, as you can see in the picture above. I couldn't be more pleased. 

My Four-Day Carrots Video on YouTube now has 1,002,705 views. If I had a nickel for every view I'd be $5,013.75 richer. If I had a dollar for every view.... well, wouldn't that be something!

My friend George Steigerwald (who I think reads this blog) once told me that making a million dollars is easy. You just buy a million of something for a dollar and sell them all for $2. I think that was the gist of it. It's a simple mercantile concept. Buying and selling something is definitely a viable way to make money. I'm pretty sure it's easier than actually making things and selling them. But I digress.

You've heard me mention Will Bonsall and his book, Will Bonsall's Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening, in recent blog posts here. The book is a bit pricy but, in my opinion, a truly unique and interesting gardening book. It is the book that turned me on to using shredded leaves in my garden.

The inspiration to shred leaves for mulch was, in itself, worth the cost of the book. But shredded leaves is just a very small part of Will's wide ranging advice. There are things in his book that are simply not found in other books. Like, for example, how to grow tiger nuts. 

What isn't in Will's book is the fact that tiger nuts are a big deal in the food world. My friend, Dale Weed, who knows a lot about this sort of thing (he's in the food business and goes to big food shows), tells me that the demand for tiger nuts is enormous. I don't know what a tiger nut is worth these days, but if you're looking for a cash crop, you should probably check it out. But, again, I digress. Back to carrots....

Another thing I learned from Will Bonsall's book is that carrots can be stored through the winter by packing them in barrels of new-fallen maple leaves. According to Will, carrots keep better and taste better when packed in leaves, as opposed to sand or sawdust. So, of course, I had to try that. I have packed three cardboard boxes full of carrots, layered and insulated with shredded leaves...

I like this carrot storage idea a lot. It seems much easier than digging four-day carrots out from under the snow (as I show in This YouTube Clip).


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Tiger Nuts Link