The Thinning List

The items on my list to be thinned included: shallots, green onions, turnips, beets and carrots.

I didn’t have many shallots and green onions to thin which was a good thing because in my opinion, they are the worst plants to thin.  They break easily and are deeply rooted.  I lightly thinned them, leaving about a fingers width between them.  They’ll hopefully need to be thinned again but by then they’ll be big enough that we can use the ones being pulled.

When I thinned the turnips I did so very liberally.  Their roots were just starting to develop into turnips so they came out easily.  When thinning the turnips I couldn’t just start pulling plants.  My turnip row consisted of a variety of plant sizes and I wanted to keep the healthier, large plants so I had to look ahead and plan what to pull and what to keep.  I tried to space them about a hand’s width apart.  Depending on how well they grow they may need more thinning; if they do, we should be able to eat what I thin the second time around.

Between the shallots, onions and turnips there was only about one full row (approx 35 ft) of plants to thin.  I was able to do this one night after work.  The carrots and beets took a lot long than an evening to thin.  I have one row of red beets, half a row of golden beets, and two rows of carrots; that’s approximately 55 feet of beets and 70 feet of carrots that needed to be thinned.  To make matters worse, the rows were thick with plants.  It took me two afternoons to accomplish this task, and what a back breaking task it was, but at least now I can say it is done.

Because the beets and carrots were so over crowded, I didn’t have to worry much about pulling out the larger plants because they were all similar in size.  If I did come across a larger, more established plant, more so in the beets, I worked around it removing the smaller ones instead. 

I spaced the carrots about a finger’s width apart and the beets about three fingers width apart.  The carrots are a little close together but as they grow we’ll start to eat them and what we pick to eat we’ll do so as if we were thinning them.  I think the beets are spaced far enough apart so they shouldn’t need to be thinned again.

Out of everything I thinned, there was nothing that would have been worth eating… except for one small bunch of carrots.  Thankfully the thinning is done and now things have a chance grow and produce.