How To Grow Carrots: Sowing, Thinning, Watering, Feeding

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

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Why do gardeners love carrots so much? They have six hundred square meters, on which there is a house, and a bathhouse, and a barn, and a well, and apple trees, plums, pears, and all the berries, local and exotic, and a sea of flowers … How much land is left for vegetables?

On such a piece of land, crop rotation is simply not feasible. At the same time, one cannot do without crop rotation, otherwise diseases and pests will get out, and these are unnecessary problems.

For gardeners, and I distinguish gardeners from gardeners living in a village, it is easier to observe crop rotation, since they were given not six acres of land, but several times more. The villages were located in areas where the soil was originally "real" by nature, and the gardener took away mostly inconveniences, for example, swamps or swampy areas, where the soil layer was generally no more than 5-10 cm. Gardeners on their sites created for years. And all the same, it had to be constantly "maintained" at the required level so that fertility did not decrease.

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To grow beautiful, smooth carrots with a high carotene content, you need to work on the garden in the fall. This crop grows well in loose, breathable soil with a high humus content and with an acidity of pH 5.5-6.0 or 6.5. Professor V. A. Borisov believes that soil with a pH of 6.0-7.1 is suitable for carrots, the humus content is at least 2%, the thickness of the humus layer is at least 35-40 cm, and the groundwater level is not higher than 1 meter.

In my area, the water is not at a depth of 1.5 shovel bayonets. So I have no right to claim the highest yield of a beautiful carrot, but such a carrot is also suitable.

Manure is usually applied under the predecessor crop. But in this case it is difficult to advise something, because it is not known how much manure was introduced under the previous crop, how much it has already "eaten" nutrients, how much is left for carrots. According to the standard standards, I can advise: in the fall, carry out a deep digging, you can use one shovel bayonet, or one and a half. It depends on the type of carrot. There are varieties with a root crop length of 10-14 cm, and there are also those that grow up to 20-25 cm.

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Maybe someone paid attention to how carrots are grown in the fields of the Leningrad Region. Narrow high ridges are made, the grooves between them are deep, knee-deep to an adult. We used to go to sponsored state farms to weed carrots and harvest. When we were weeding, we were always surprised: is it possible that something will grow out of these seedlings? And then they came to the state farm for harvesting and were surprised again: what a beautiful, bright, large carrot had grown! There were very rainy seasons, when the water from the furrows did not have time to leave, then even tractors were stuck, which transported boxes of carrots on trailers. But the roots were beautiful even then. And there were seasons - not a single rain. And no one has ever watered the fields with carrots.

It's just that the agronomists will sow on time, the seeds will fall into the moist soil, and during weeding we put the weeds in the furrows. And they also retained moisture. I brought this example so that gardeners do not refer to the bad weather, which, they say, led to a poor harvest of carrots. You can do without watering. The main thing is to create a loose, breathable ridge of carrots, and it will get moisture from the soil itself.

It is advisable to fill the sand bed as follows: for 1 m², add two buckets of sod land, two buckets of peat compost, 1 bucket of humus, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of superphosphate, 2 tbsp. spoons of azofoska.

We will fill the bed on clay, podzolic soil differently: add 1-2 buckets of sand, 1-2 buckets of peat compost, 1 bucket of humus, 0.5 buckets of old sawdust, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of superphosphate, 2 tbsp. spoons of azofoska.

In a garden bed, where already depleted peat is the basis, add 0.5 buckets of coarse sand, 1 bucket of humus, 1 bucket of turf soil, 1 tbsp. spoon of urea, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of superphosphate, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of potassium sulfate.

To meet all the soil requirements of carrots, you will have to work thoroughly. If you no longer have the strength to perform such work, then you should not grow carrots. If you do not have the strength to dig deep into the garden, then do not grow varieties with a long root crop. There is no strength or opportunity to improve the bed with sand, peat - in this case, add more humus. No humus - add more compost.

I put only humus and mineral fertilizers under the carrots, because I think that my soil doesn't need anything else. For gardeners who have good, fertile and light soils, it is easier. They brought manure under the previous crop, and in the spring they will add humus to the garden bed - and everything is ready for sowing carrots. For example, 40 years ago, when we lived in Rostov-on-Don, we had a garden plot where the humus layer reached one meter! There I just watered the carrots in the garden. At that time, of the fertilizers for gardeners there was only "Riga mix", and it was brought in for digging. The carrots grew excellent, but only with watering, because the weather is hot there.

I remembered my former garden plot, and one funny incident related to carrots immediately came to my mind. On the site lived hedgehogs, periodically with me a weasel dropped into the barn, and sometimes I saw how it jumped back. The garden and hares visited. They turned out to be a rather arrogant "people". On the veranda, open on all sides, there was a large round table covered with oilcloth, around the table were wide benches.

Once I came to the site, and a large hare was sitting on a bench at the table. I began to reprimand him that, they say, I was already tired of wiping the dirt off the table. He twisted his head for a long time, goggled his eyes, as if petrified. I had to swing a broom at him. Probably, he was waiting for a girlfriend, but I showed up at the wrong time. By the fall, I noticed that my carrot tops began to disappear. And it was too early to harvest. The tops looked like they had been cut by someone. I thought maybe it was the rats that hurt. By that time, the tops were no longer in a third of the beds.

Once she worked as a rake near a carrot bed. And when she straightened and leaned against the rake, she saw a hare sitting on a bed under a vine of the Isabella variety. Sits, looks at me and does not move. I began to reprimand him, they say, now I understand who is eating carrot tops. And he calmly sits and looks at me point-blank, as hypnotizing. I called him arrogant, because he was clearly waiting for me to leave the carrot garden to continue his work. I promised him that I would now water the carrots, and early in the morning I would harvest the entire root crop, and leave the tops to him. In fairy tales they write that hares pull the carrots themselves from the soil. And in mine, unlike the fairy tale, not a single carrot was gnawed, although its tops were visible from the soil. Okay, a little distracted, now to the point. So,

Sowing carrots

Carrots are considered a tug-like crop. Therefore, gardeners use various techniques to accelerate seed germination. The seeds are soaked for one day or washed under the tap, some extend this procedure up to two days. Then the seeds must be placed in the refrigerator for 2-5 days. Or you can bury it in cold soil 10-12 days before sowing to the depth of a shovel bayonet. And on the day of sowing, you need to get them out of the soil, dry them for 20-25 minutes and sow.

They say that such seeds sprout on the 4th-5th day. I have not used any of these methods of preparing seeds for sowing, so I cannot confidently recommend any of them. I do not process carrot seeds in any way, I sow them directly into the garden. But the soil at this time is still cold, that is, I sow, as the people say, into the "mud". In our area, this happens at the end of April and in the beginning of May.

My garden bed has already been prepared since autumn, but in the spring I dig it up with a pitchfork, level the soil and make grooves 1.5-2 cm deep. I pour superphosphate there - 1 teaspoon per two running meters of the furrow and sow carrot seeds. If the top layer of the soil is a little dry, then I spill the groove with water and immediately sprinkle the seeds. Then I sprinkle the groove with loose soil (without lumps), mulch the whole bed with humus, and close it tightly with a film. After 10-15 days, the carrots begin to sprout, then I urgently remove the film. If you first cover the crops with lutrasil, then the soil under it dries out quickly, and the seeds really need moisture for germination.

I will not name the varieties that I sow in my beds - everyone should choose them for their soil, now there is such a large assortment of them. I do not name them, not because I keep them a secret, but because there have been cases: I will recommend varieties that give me a good harvest, and the gardeners then complain that they did not succeed. So, by trial and error, look for your varieties and hybrids, including carrots.

Seeds begin to germinate at a soil temperature of + 4 … + 5 ° C. At a temperature of + 16 … + 18 ° C, seedlings appear in two weeks, and at a temperature of + 20 ° C, seedlings will sprout in 8-10 days. All this is conditional, since much depends on the quality and strength of the seeds, on the presence of moisture in the soil … The optimum temperature for active growth of carrots is + 20 … 25 ° С.

Someone invented the timing of sowing carrots for winter storage of root crops. They provide for sowing seeds in the last days of June and the first decade of July. For our zone (60th parallel), these terms are not suitable. Suppose the selected variety has a growing season of 130 days. We believe that it will rise on July 15. This means that it will vegetate in July 15 days, in August 30 days, in September 30 days. In total, only 75 days are allotted for her. They say that even throughout October you can keep carrots in the garden. But in October, the soil temperature is already 10 ° С, and carrots need + 20 … 25 ° С. And if this variety is still with a growing season of 180 days ?! Read the description of the variety on the bags and think about how long your variety needs.

I don’t use these sowing times, because I know that nothing will come of it. But the neighbor tried to sow at such a time. And then all the neighbors laughed: the early sowing period of carrots turned out to be excellent, but late - one trifle grew. She asked me to come up with something to improve the harvest, but what can you think of if the soil temperature was no longer above + 10oС, and even colder at night. Even if we sow seeds on June 1, then the earliest varieties will not have time to ripen.

Or another case: on April 28, I decided to sow a hybrid of carrots with long, large roots. But its growing season is 180 days. So they will rise on May 10. Carrots will grow until the end of September 144 days, but this hybrid needs 180 days to fully ripen. At first glance, my carrots have grown large, solid. But I knew that - during storage, it will begin to germinate quickly. If you also grow such carrots, then put them separately and use them first of all: for winter preparations, for example, pies with carrots, cheesecakes are also good. Now, planning a new season, I decided: I will try to sow carrots on April 30.

The distance between root crops after thinning: for early distillation 3 cm, between rows 20 cm, for autumn harvesting 6 cm, between rows - 20-25 cm. I sometimes grow early varieties with a row spacing of 10 cm, but at the same time I remove one row completely when carrots will grow from a little finger. These root crops will be used for culinary purposes - do not go to St. Petersburg for carrots from near Vyborg if nothing remains of last year's harvest.

For many years, for an early harvest, I sowed carrots in a greenhouse near tomatoes in one row. I sowed the seeds as soon as I dig up the ridge in the greenhouse, fill it with everything necessary. This row helped out great in the summer. But one day some rodent, a shrew or a rat, ate almost all the roots, leaving only the tops of the roots and wilted tops. I don't sow carrots in the greenhouse anymore.

Thinning carrots

If you carefully prepared the ridge, sowed the seeds on time, the carrots sprouted together, but you did not thin out the seedlings, you will still get tails instead of normal root crops. Experts recommend to carry out the first thinning after the appearance of the first true leaf. I want to say that there will be no big trouble if you thin out the seedlings even after the appearance of the second leaf. This is exactly what I do - I thin out after the formation of the second leaf. Some gardeners in the winter calmly "sow" carrot seeds with a paste on a tape of toilet paper. Then you won't have to thin out the crops. The disadvantage of this technology is that, it happens, not all seeds germinate, then holes appear in the rows.

The second and final thinning I do at a time when the pinky-sized root crop has already formed. I noticed that the best crop is obtained when I thin out only once: I immediately leave the distance between the plants 6 cm, and the row spacing - 20 cm.

All summer the carrots in my garden are covered with lutrasil. As soon as shoots appear, I remove the film from the ridge and cover the carrots with lutrasil so that it does not interfere with the growth of the carrot tops. Rain moisture or moisture after watering with a watering can easily penetrates through the covering material. Then the lutrasil dries easily, the wind flutters it. Under such a shelter there is no crust on the soil, and most importantly - the plants are not damaged by aphids, leaf beetles, carrot flies. Loosening under lutrasil is not required. But when I thin out the seedlings, I immediately loosen the soil.

Watering

I don't water the carrots on purpose. But if you still need to water, if, say, the soil is very dry, then water deeply - up to 30 cm deep, this will require about 30 liters per 1 m². If you water it often, but shallowly, then the roots turn out to be ugly, growing in breadth with the roots. With excessive watering, the tops and core grow strongly.

Top dressing

I feed the carrots once with potassium sulfate right after the second thinning, around the second half of June. You can look at the fertilizer rate on the seed bag, since there are scientists who have developed what carrots need on different types of soil. But everywhere with such feeding, potassium in them should be three to six times more than nitrogen. Many gardeners use Uniflor fertilizer.

According to the tables of V. N. Molodtsov, carrots need to be fed eight times per season. But after all, there is a fertilizer rate per 1 kg of products, half of it must be applied during sowing, and the rest should be divided into top dressing. Maybe they do this in large fields, so in stores the carrots are long, even, beautiful and almost completely without a core. I think it was grown correctly, since if it were with nitrates, it would not have been stored for a long time.

Branching is such a development of a root crop when it stops growing in depth, but grows in breadth, forming several roots. The result is an ugly carrot. The reasons for this: you have applied manure for planting; thinned crops, in which the plant has a large feeding area; drought; shallow watering; shallow digging of soil; clay soils. I want to note that on clay soils, varieties with conical root crops such as the Shantane variety and worse are obtained. more branching, cultivars with cylindrical roots.

Carrots are appreciated for their high carotene content. It was found that the synthesis of carotene in fruits is better at an air temperature of + 15 … + 21 ° C. Scientists have found that carotene in carrot roots is in the form of alpha, beta and gamma isomers of carbohydrates. Beta isomers are of the greatest value. The presence of carotene is associated with the intensity of the color of the root crop: red has more beta-carotene, orange - more alpha-carotene.

When the alpha-carotene content is low, the roots acquire a bitter taste during storage. This flavor is sometimes acquired by carrots grown on sandy soil.

Sometimes yellow roots come across. This means that these were carrot seeds. Our breeders used to create varieties in central Russia with a high carotene content and a small core. But after the collapse of the state farms, seed production was transferred to the southern regions in order to receive seeds there in one season in a direct culture. And there are a lot of wild carrots, so sometimes we get yellow roots from cross-pollination with them. These are not Asian varieties, as some say, this is a violation of seed technology.

During heat treatment, scientists believe, carotene is destroyed by half. I do not understand why half, and not all? But this is not scary: we have learned to grow such varieties of pepper, where the carotene content is higher than that of carrots, so don't worry - we'll just eat more pepper - that's the solution to the problem.

After heat treatment, carotene and other vitamins are lost. And trace elements remain. Why are they forgotten? We need them just like vitamins. And carrots contain iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, lycopene, bioflavonoids, vitamin C, beta-carotene, biotin, and folic acid. So grow carrots in your beds and eat them for health! Have a good harvest in the new season!