Our first edibles!

I pulled up some carrots from our garden this weekend. Although they were only bite-sized, they were edible nonetheless!

Not without a teachable moment though. This lesson is called "this is why you thin your seedlings." [Cue the one-armed man.]

The old-school style of planting involves scattering seeds in little groups of five or more, using an entire packet of seeds every season. Then, when the seedlings break the soil, you have to pull up most of them to allow space for the others to grow.

More recently (well, as of the 1970s), small scale home gardeners have figured out that you could save a lot of time (and quite a lot of seed) if you plant just one seed deliberately per spot. And you can go ahead and space out the seeds to the ideal growing spacing from the get-go. If you don't trust your seeds, you can always plant two seeds per spot and reduce it to one seedling after they've sprouted. Even using two seeds per spot, you save many, many seeds and lots of time in thinning.

[Why do you want extra seeds? You can keep them in the refrigerator for quite a while. Many years for some types.]

Of course, now we know enough to plant our seeds (even the tiny carrot seeds), one-by-one, so we don't have to thin seedlings or deal with overcrowded plants. But, hey, even our tiny carrots were extremely gratifying and kind of yummy.