Truth be told, Charity is the genuine green thumbed fairy in this little twosome we’ve got going here. This isn’t to say that I’m a fraud. I would absolutely LOVE to have a garden plush with homegrown edibles intermingled with bursts of brightly colored floral embellishments. But, I’m one of those city-dwellers for whom outdoor space is but merely a dream. And I’ve yet to keep anything anything alive, except myself (touch wood!), for very long. Still, for some time now, I’ve been conjuring up all kinds of plans for using my ample indoor window sill to create a sort of vegetable and herb oasis. I’ve perused many a website, studied books and even visited garden stores and the plant stalls at various green markets. Trust me, if only you could see into my mind’s eye, you would be impressed with the luscious greenery, rotund baby eggplants, siren red chili peppers and petite but perfectly formed Italian alpine strawberries, not to mention the strawberry jar barely visible beneath the sprawling, verdant collection of mixed herbs.

But back to reality. I was finally jolted into actually doing something about this fantasy of mine as my first wedding anniversary approached. I decided I was going to plant carrots.

Yes, I know, these don’t feature in my virtual indoor garden utopia above. And yes again, there are countless vegetables that are not only better suited to indoor growing, but that also offer an easier entree into gardening for the novice. But there was method in my madness. You see, at about 4.30pm on a cold but bright February Sunday (the 21st of the month, to be precise) a year and a half ago, my husband, Peter, got down on bended knee in a bed of Mokum carrots, and proposed. The venue was a greenhouse at Stone Barns – a non-profit, four season farm in Westchester, New York, home also to one of the best, most sublime restaurants in the country, Blue Hill (where, incidentally, we later celebrated our engagement). And so it made perfect sense that my first attempt at gardening was to grow Mokums – the king among carrots, some say, in an indoor planter which I was going to present to my husband as an anniversary gift.

Read on to see how I fared!

Part of the fun of this little escapade was that I had to keep the project a secret from my husband until the big reveal. 10 days before our anniversary, Charity and I hot footed it down to Plant Works in Manhattan’s East Village where we picked up a beautiful dark green ceramic planter with matching rimmed plate, and Espoma Organic Seed Starter potting mix. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had already received my pack of Mokum carrot seeds from the  Territorial Seed Company. Back at Project Secret Carrot HQ (I know I’m a writer, and I couldn’t come up with anything better?!), Charity watched over my shoulder administering judicious instructions as I first filled up the planter loosely with the soil mix, then carefully scattered the seeds evenly across the surface and finally covered the seeds with about an inch more soil. You may be wondering why I wasn’t more exact in my positioning of the seeds so each carrot would have enough space to develop. Well, as the seeds were so tiny and finicky to work with, Charity advised that it would be best to thin them once the shoots appeared. Now all that was left to do was to give the carrot babies a drink of water and place them on the window sill….until that is, my husband returned from work. In full duplicitous mode, I put the chain the on door, and the moment I heard the rattling of keys, I hid the planter in my closet (I have a very large closet). Then the following morning, once my husband had left for work, the carrots emerged for their dose of sunshine and company.

For 9 long days I continued this charade, but the carrots did nothing. I watered them every 2 to 3 days depending on how dry the soil felt, told them stories about my various writing projects and just generally engaged them in idle banter. But nothing….until the 14th August. On the day of our anniversary, the first shoots emerged from the soil, and they were the cutest shoots ever to emerge, I’m sure. From this day onwards, as you’ll see in the photos below, the shoots grew like Jack’s been stalk, every day they got discernibly taller and more leafy. Around Day 15, I decided it was time to thin. This was very traumatic as every time I plucked a shoot from the soil I was sure I was committing infanticide. But I persevered and thinned to the carrots until there was about an inch of space between the shoots. The packet recommended thinning to 1 1/2 inches, but since I intended to harvest the carrots as babies and not as fully grown “adults,” an inch was sufficient.

All was going swimmingly well until the 24th August. I realized that morning that we were heading off on our 10-day summer vacation and I hadn’t arranged a sitter for the babies. So I gave them a stern talking too, a hefty watering, and left them with a warning to behave, and not die. Unfortunately, 10 days in the summer in New York without water is a lot for young carrot shoots to bear. When we returned, I noticed 2 things: 1. Boy, did my carrots do a lot of growing, and 2. Boy, do they look parched and excessively floppy. In fact, the greenery was so wilted and weak that the long, gangly shoots had became tangled up in a frightful mess. 15 minutes of careful detangling, and a good drink later, the carrots seemed marginally happier and less vexed.

3 days after our return, with continued ample watering and much TLC, the carrots are slowly inching themselves away from death’s door, but the situation remains critical. Charity reassures me that plants are capable of making miraculous recoveries. Still, if you have any spare good energy lying around, send it in the direction of my anniversary carrots!  Stay tuned for updates….

Tags: carrots, indoor growing, mokum, planters, window