Growing Carrots
Great Tips On Growing Carrots
Growing carrots is not difficult and, as this vegetable is so high in nutritional value, every vegetable garden should have some. When you purchase seeds at the supermarket or seed store, you'll find you generally have a choice among several varieties. Just looking at the seed packets can probably give you a pretty good idea of what it is you want. Some varieties excel in producing very tender "baby carrots", before growing to full maturity. Some are long and slender, others not so long and more bulky. And there are miniature carrots, somewhat resembling orange radishes, but tasting very much as carrots should taste.
Something else you might notice when looking at the packets, the varieties are more than likely F1 hybrids. What this means is, the seed grower has produced the seeds in the packet from two varieties, two different parents. One parent has a certain desirable characteristic, and the other parent has a different desirable characteristic. The pollen from one parent is used to pollinate the flowers of the other, giving you seeds which, when planted, should give you a carrot having the best of both worlds.
There is one thing you need to know about F1 hybrid seeds when growing carrots. While you will get a nice crop of carrots from them, if you allow your carrots to go to seed, which will happen in the second year, those seeds will be sterile. So there's no point in letting some of your crop winter over, in hopes of harvesting your very own carrot seeds next year.
A seed packet will usually contain 1000 or so seeds. The seeds are planted 1/4" deep, and a typical seed packet should be sufficient for a 35 foot row. You can broadcast the seeds as well, but just remember that the seedlings need to be thinned, and broadcasting over a wide area could make thinning more difficult. Plant carrot seeds in early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked. It takes around 2 weeks for the seeds to germinate. Since the roots may grow anywhere from 3 to 12 inches long, depending upon the variety, you'll want to plant carrot seeds in well prepared, loose soil. You can stagger planting times until reaching hotter weather, for a continuous harvest later on.
When growing carrots, they can be planted next to almost any other crop in your garden, the one exception being dill. For some reason the two do not coexist well. Like most vegetables, carrots like full sun, and should do well when given adequate moisture. You'll need to thin out the seedlings, perhaps a couple of times, so the roots of the mature plants will not crowd.
You can begin harvesting your carrots when the roots are still quite small. At this point they are at there most tender. You can continue to harvest until after frost. Some believe carrots are at their best and tastiest after the first frost. Carrots will keep in the ground over winter where winters are mild, and this was at one time the way they were kept, until refrigeration became widely available. Carrots kept in the ground during the winter will, after a while, begin to loose their tenderness and flavor.
By growing carrots, you will be investing a small amount of time and effort, and can look forward with confidence, to harvesting a very tasty and nutritious crop. And when you are working in you garden in the summer, you can always pull a plant up, wipe off the root, and eat it right there. No one will mind.