Kitchen Garden Forum

Going to cut down an old water barrel for carrots next season. What would you say is the optimum height ! [I am still in Imperial mode ]

Avoid bending, just take the lip off.

Cut it in half and stand it on bricks so it comes up to come up to waist height.

Cheers, Tony.

Hello SM
I have a couple of old blue barrels that I use for growing carrots. They are just under 2 ft wide and have been cut down to 2 ft high. One I use for growing carrots for our local veg. show and this finishes up with only 6 plants in it as I want them to get to a good size. The other one has 30 or more in it which I thin in stages and they just get used in the kitchen. I grow 'Sweet Candle' which is an excellent show variety and also tastes really good. I use multi-purpose compost to fill them as I guess that any soil based stuff would slump badly. You will have to resort to some soluble feeding to get any reasonable growth and regular watering.
As others have suggested do get the barrels up off the ground by resting them on bricks or similar. Its easier to work on them and more importantly stops ants moving in. Ants will love to build a nest in them given half a chance and then growth will be very poor..
John

Thank You all for your advice.