How To Grow Carrots… Growing Your Own Vegetables Can Be Incredibly Rewarding, Here’s Where To Start.
If you love your garden but need advice on how to keep it looking lush and welcoming all year round. In this regular column we will demystifies common gardening problems, explains what to tackle when, and show how to make every moment on the plot more fun and productive. Happy gardening!
Carrots dislike cold soil temperatures so fight the temptation to start sowing them on your first sunny weekend in the garden in a T-shirt. We shouldn’t be sowing carrot seed until the middle of April when the soil has warmed up.
So, where to start? Carrots like a fine soil which has a sand-like consistency; heavy or stony soils can be problematic and give poor results. If friable level soil is just a pipe dream in your garden, don’t worry, growing carrots in pots is the way to go and I’ll discuss this below.
If growing carrots in the soil, lightly fork over the ground to loosen it, this makes the soil easier to rake and level. Use a piece of string tied to two bamboo canes and make sure it’s stretched tight. A loose string line will lead to a wobbly line of carrots. Once your string has some tension, use the corner of a hoe or a rake (or even your finger) to draw along the string as a guide and create a shallow trench 1-2cm deep. If you have room for more than one row, each row should be 15cm apart.
Sow seeds very thinly, they should germinate within three weeks. Once young carrots are large enough to handle, thin them to 5-7cm apart to allow each to develop into a reasonable size and remember to water them well during dry spells. Carrots sown in mid-April should be ready to eat around September.
To grow carrots in pots, choose a short-rooted variety such as ‘Caracas’, available from your local nursery. A large container, full of peat-free multipurpose compost, will be ideal. Sow thinly across the surface of the soil and thin to the same spacings as if they were in the ground.
With all carrots, root fly can be a real pain, but I’ve overcome this recently by growing all my carrots, whether in the ground or in pots, under a layer of horticultural fleece. This acts as a physical barrier to keep the little blighters off the crop from sowing until harvest.
