GROWING SUMMARY​

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• Carrots are herbaceous biennial plants grown for their edible tap roots which form in their first year before they run up to seed.

• Carrots must be direct seeded and do best in deep sandy soils but they can be grown in heavy soils too. Just choose a fat, short variety. Plant them after a big leafy green that has removed quite a bit of nitrogen from the soil. Too much nitrogen makes for lots of leaf and small roots. A dressing of reactive rock phosphate is all the fertiliser carrots need.  

• Seed can be sown in 4-6 week successions from late spring through to mid summer. The seed can be slow to germinate if the soil is cold and weed competition will be a problem. Always do a large late sowing. The soil will be well warmed up, germination will be fast and the carrots will mature into winter where they will just sit in the ground for months getting sweeter and sweeter. The more frosts and cold weather they are exposed to the better.  

• The seed is small and planted in rows, 150mm apart. It is sown close to the surface and it is essential to keep the ground moist until the delicate seedlings appear. Be careful not to over sow the seed.

• Carrots can be harvested at any size so if you have over sown pull lots of baby carrots out early leaving a nice row of evenly spaced plants that can grow on to full size.

• Sprinkler irrigation works best. Lots of short regular waterings to start with. Longer less frequent irrigations once they get bigger. Well formed long carrots need the water to go down to the end of their roots.

• They do not suffer from many pests and diseases when grown in compost enriched, organic soils but if the soil is heavy and there is a lot of rain they can rot from the bottom up.

• Over wintered carrots must be harvested by the end of winter when they will bolt up to seed and become woody.