'I grew a whopper of a carrot in my garden'

Diana McIntyre is passionate about food waste and sustainability

A woman has credited her homemade compost for "supercharging" her vegetable patch - leading to a "whopper" of a carrot.

Diana McIntyre, from Forton, Lancashire, grew the 32cm (12ins) vegetable in only her second year of growing carrots in her garden.

Ms McIntyre, who is passionate about food waste and sustainability, said she decided to try different things this year after only managing to grow one carrot last year.

"The soil's quite heavy clay so we've added lots of organic matter," she said. "I compost all of the raw kitchen scraps with cardboard and that made really good, really rich compost teaming with worms."

The super carrot ended up in a vegetable pie as well as in soup and some got roasted with cumin seeds

Ms McIntyre, whose father taught her how to compost, added: "It's full of life and full of real goodness.

"I did this to supercharge the compost and inoculate the soil with some really good microbes.

"I don't use any chemical fertilisers or pesticides or insecticides - so I never spray the vegetables with anything bought from a shop - but I sometimes use bocashi which is another way of fermenting food that's been cooked.

"Fermenting makes it more acidic, turning it into a sort of baby food for worms - they really love it."

She said she had thought she couldn't grow carrots, after her experience last year, but had been delighted to get "a whopper" of a carrot this year.

'Super sweet'

Ms McIntyre is community composting coordinator for FoodFutures' North Lancashire Closing Loops project which aims to reduce waste and build community relationships.

She has transformed her garden into an environment-friendly composting area with a soil patch, green house and composting bins to make all of her food waste sustainable.

Ms McIntyre said she sowed the seeds in April and tried "companion planting" with one row of carrots between two rows of onions to try to avoid carrot fly damage.

She watered them after sowing but said she ignored them after they germinated, only weeding them a couple of times.

The "super sweet" super carrot ended up in a vegetable pie, soup and some got roasted with cumin seeds.