Grower’s Corner – Carrots
Carrots grow best in light, sandy soil, so if your soil is heavy, stony, chalky or doesn’t drain particularly well, concentrate on the maincrop, short-root types which cope better with these conditions. What does that mean? Well carrot varieties are described as early or maincrop varieties, but also either short-root or long-root varieties. These names are supposed to advise you as to when they will crop and the type of soil they are suitable for.
- Early carrot varieties take around 12 weeks to mature and maincrop carrot varieties are ready in around 16 weeks.
- Maincrops take up the most space in the garden, but they tend to be the best varieties to grow if you want carrots for storage.
Success with almost any with root vegetable depends on the quality of the soil they are grown in, so it’s worth taking the time to prepare a carrot bed. Start digging over your soil in late winter or early spring, removing any stones you find, even tiny ones, and thoroughly turning the soil until it has a fine, crumbly texture. If your soil is not ideally suitable for carrots or parsnips, you can prepare a large container for sowing instead. When digging over your soil, do not add manure as this makes the soil too rich for the seeds and causes forking while stones can cause splitting.
Carrot seeds are small, but it’s wise to plant them as thinly as possible. This reduces the amount of thinning necessary and hence the potential risk from pests. If you have difficulty sowing thinly, try mixing the seeds with a handful of sharp sand and then sowing the seeds and sand together. There’s another benefit to this - the sand will aid drainage and will allow thinner sowing. Once the seeds have germinated and are showing their first rough leaves, thin the seedlings to two inches between plants. The plants need little other attention during their growth period, although the plants should be kept well watered – too little water results in coarse, woody roots.
From June, start pulling up your carrots as soon as they are big enough to eat. It’s best to harvest them in the evening to avoid attracting carrot fly. Late-sown carrots must be lifted by October if they are to be stored over the winter. Store only the best, undamaged roots, cutting off their foliage and lie the roots between layers of sand in a strong box, ensuring that the roots do not touch. Put the box somewhere cool and dry, and check the carrots occasionally - removing any rotten roots.
Pests
The main threat to your carrot crop comes from carrot fly. This pest is drawn to the carrots by the smell of crushed foliage, so reduce the risk of an attack by sowing thinly in the first place, thinning plants in the evening on a still day, removing any thinnings and watering afterwards to dampen down the smell. Carrot fly are also low-flying insects: erecting a ‘wind-break’ style shield around a crop will also help deter these pests.
Top tips
There are ways to beat the pests, one of which is to grow mini-carrots in pots or troughs to make sowing - and controlling pests and weeds - easier. Even a windowsill or back step can produce a crop. Grown densely and harvested very young, the roots are very sweet and tender - perfect for salads and stir-fries and they can be scrubbed rather than peeled. Use containers at least eight inches deep, filled multipurpose compost. Scatter seed very thinly on the surface, close packed seeds lead to weaker plants and more chance of carrot fly, cover with a sprinkling of compost and water well. Aim for seedlings about half an inch to an inch apart. In three months they'll be fattened enough to be worth eating and successional monthly sowings from April to July will give you a continual summer harvest.
Photographs by color line and daxiang stef, used under a creative commons attribution licence