Kitchen Garden Forum

Hi,
Has anyone had the problems I have been having with trying to get some carrots this year! My parsnips are up but no carrots and this is on the second sowing attempt of both Early Nantes and Autumn King. I thought I made sure not to sow too deeply. Having moved from a light soil to green sand/clay patches I thought I would be OK. Any suggestions for the next attempt would be gratefully received.
Thanks
Hilary

I always have trouble getting carrots to germinate. Now I water a little row, scatter the seeds, just cover with fine soil then cover them up with fleece of a cloche - regardless of the time of year (in fact I planted some today like this)

I often find that one end of the row germinates fine, but the other doesn't! Random.

One whole row I planted this year just didn't germinate at all.

Anyhoo, good luck, and sandy soil should be good. I have heavy clay and lots of lots of stones which makes for entertaining carrotty shapes but difficulty in cleaning/using!

Try putting compost into your drill before sowing. I find this helps.

Hi Hilary,
Have you thought of the possibility of them germinating and are eaten by Keeled Slugs before you get to see them. This has occurred with me in the past and I now sow into spent compost or MP compost and place ,not scatter, slug pellets each side of the tow. I will give you and example of Keeled Slugs and barely germinated Carrots. I noticed that my Carrots were just germinating one evening and went back in the morning and of a 30ft row the remaining few were being attacked by at least 6 keeled slugs and they had eaten the lot bar about a dozen Carrots. I resowed and this time protected against slugs and had an exceedingly good germination and caught about 40 K slugs.

My immediate thoughts on this one is that moisture is critical to germinate the carrots, it must not be waterlogged nor at any time in the first week or two must the surface be allowed to dry out completely. The topic was discussed at length some time ago on this Forum but I haven't been able to find it yet.
This is not in any way to contradict what has been said above, the fleece would certainly cut down the drying effect.
Allan

Hello Hilary - I am with Johnboy on this one. We've had the symptoms you describe with our carrots and for us it was slugs. They get them at a very early stage of germination, before us even being aware the seedlings had come up. This was confirmed when we started putting slug pellets down at sowing time and if necessary, just as we saw the first one or two seedlings. Need to look very closely. Suddenly our carrots started 'germinating'. We have yet to conquer the problem of an even spread in the row, however. Another story.

Last year I had a lot of ground and no time so when the carrots did nothing I just ignored them and got on with other things. Ages later there they were and produced very well.

Carrots seem somewhat obstinate I find - best 'fire and forget' in my experience.

Hope this helps,

David

Thanks all,
Will try again this evening with all the suggestions, have decided not to be a slave to organic on this one and will put a few pellets down under the fleece to protect the birds.
Bye
Hilary

Hi Chez,
I sow two varities, Early Nantes and Autumn King, and I use pelleted seed, which is available from Moles Commercial catalogue. These seeds are so easy to sow which I do at one inch intervals and never thin out until there is something edible on the end.
They are finally thinned out to approx three inches apart.
I am experimenting growing them in a 4ftx4ft raised bed x 2, one for each variety. As sown I will finish up with Carrots at three inch spacings in any direction and the whole idea of the experiment is to see how they grow in a mass rather than in regular rows twelve inches apart.I had my first pulling of Early Nantes a fortnight ago and for size they were good and seemed no different in size from growing in rows. The whole of the beds are protected with heavy duty fleece. (30 gram) So far so good and the Pelleted seeds are so easy to handle.

I put slug pellets around the rows - absolutely essential - and I have been a bit too successful these past few years as follows.

Draw out a trench, then very lightly put in some compost and firm it down to prevent the seed falling through cracks. Sow seed as lightly as possible (which I not very good at!) then cover very lightly with compost and make sure that it NEVER dries out until germination. Now I always have to thin out the carrots but it's better than having none or gappy rows. And renew slug pellets when necessary.

Jonhboy, a little word of warning.
Last year i grew two rows of carrots 30feet long 2feet wide. One row was Early Nantes the other James Scarlet Intermediate.
I ligtly broadcast normal seed and raked it in, germination was very good and not at all patchy.
The Early Nantes cropped off really well, but the problem came with the J.S.I .
I sarted pulling good sized thinnings, but then was on holiday for a week and it was very hot and dry.
On returning i noticed a few carrots had started to go to seed, on pulling some more i couldn't believe how dry they were, an awfull lot drier than some Autumn King that i had got in the normal single rows.
I found that i was having to give the wider rows an awful lot more water than the normal rows.
I lost about 25% of the J.S.I from going to seed, and sure this was down to misjudging the amount of extra water they need in growing in this way.
They weren't in raisd beds by the way.

Kind regards Old Herbaceous.

Theres no fools like them old fools.

Hi Old Herby,
Thanks for the warning and I will report if anything untoword occurs. The Carrots all seem to be doing well at present but that doesn't mean that things can start to go wrong. They have disliked this very hot spell and I have been otherwise engaged since Thursday until last night and they have needed watering whereas in rows they would have not.
Covering with fleece may be good against Rootfly and a little shade but I think as they are they have a tendency to overheat due to lack of ventilation.
My Carrots grown in rows are covered with Anti White Fly netting which allows an exceedingly good flow of air and am thinking of changinging the protection on my experimental ones.