Carrots are probably the top vegetable in both popularity and versatility, and yet they are the crop that fails most often for a lot of gardeners. The seed is small, has short viability, germinates slower than weeds, new growth is loved by small rodents, and hand weeding is tricky because of the hard-to-spot foliage - so many reasons to fail!
After decades of frustration with hit and miss carrot growing Sue and I now use a technique that gives close to a 100% success rate. This simple technique gets round all of the above problems and a few more besides.
So here's how it's done:
We begin by sowing the carrot seeds into 1 litre deep pots (milk cartons are just as good). Any fresh compost will do, the peat free seems to work just as well as the peat based kinds. Sow around 15 to 20 seeds evenly across the surface of the compost and the cover lightly with the same material. Water in witha fine rose can or sprayer.
Place the pots on a raised structure - this needs to be more than 75cm above ground level (to escape the low flying carrot fly). Germination will take about 2 weeks. During germination and growth do not allow the pots to dry out - water every couple of days.
Your pots of carrot seedlings are ready to plant into the garden when the roots have developed enough to hold the compost together - this will be about six weeks from sowing (longer in cool weather). The plants will be about 8cm high at this stage.Plant into good deep soil at 25cm spacing between the plants and 30cm between the rows.....use a trowel to do this.
After planting, water the plants carefully - don't use a hose with too much pressure or you will blast the growing medium away from the roots - be gentle.
Immediately after planting cover the plants with a sheet of enviromesh (not frost prtection fleece). This will give you a bad feeling as the lovingly grown seedlings will we somewhat flattened but they'll soon get over it.....they will lift the fleece so be sure to secure in a way that allows about 40cm height - ie. with a degree of looseness.
There's not much to be done until harvesting - just keep the weeds under control, you'll need to lift the enviromesh to do the hoeing - put it straight back as soon as you have finished. In dry periods irrigate - a sprinkler over head will work well - the water goes straight through the enviromesh.
Keep the enviromesh in place during harvest; well you can lift it to get the job done, no need to crawl around under it - just be sure to put it back carefully.
Notes:
Varieties - Amsterdam forcing, Nantes, Berlicum, Chantenay Red cored, and Autumn King have all worked well for us - avoid the very long varieties. Show types would not do well using this method of culture.
Enviromesh - I have no idea what this is called outside of the UK. It is very important that you try to get a good 'seal' at the mesh/soil interface as Carrott root flies are sneaky and will get through gaps.
1 litre deep pots. - the right pots are important, deep pots allow the roots to develop to a typical carrot depth during growth prior to planting out. Tall milk cartons are fine - the ones that Alpro Soya milk come in work very well.Here's a link to a site that sells 1 litre deep pots - I have no idea about the vendor, so this is not a recommendation.
When to sow - you can sow just about any time in the south of the UK. In colder weather the plants will take much longer to become ready to plant out. We sow a sucession, around 20 pots every three or four weeks during the growing season. This provides ample carrots with some to spare for the voles to eat.
A visual guide to this technique will be posted shortly.
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