Carrot Essentials

Food Gardening Guide → Other Root Crops / Getting Started

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• Choose a variety that matches your soil conditions.
• Stagger your carrot seeding starting 3 to 4 weeks before the average last spring frost date.
• Plant additional areas at 3-week intervals as the soil temperatures rise.

• Make furrows 1/4 inch deep, spaced 4 inches apart.
• Put a 1/4 inch layer of sifted compost or peat moss in the bottom of each furrow and sow the seeds, about 3 per inch, on top. Cover with a 1/2 inch layer of the same material.
• Lightly mulch the seedbed to retain moisture and prevent soil crusting.

• Thin carrots to stand 3 inches apart between plants.
• Weed carefully and cultivate lightly near the plants.
• Add mulch about 6 weeks after sowing to prevent exposing the roots to the sun, which gives them a bitter taste. When the carrot tops are about 6 inches tall, side-dress with a sprinkling of a natural fertilizer such as dried cow manure. If the bed is mulched heavily, use a liquid fertilizer such as fish emulsion, seaweed, or other general-purpose plant food.
• Carrots are rarely bothered by pests. See our article Summer's Bad Guys by Charlie Nardozzi for controls of common carrot pests such as wireworms.

• Carrots are generally ready for harvest in 2 to 3 months, when they are about 1/2 inch in diameter. Leave them in the ground until you need them.
• Drench the bed with water for easy harvesting.
• Pull the carrots by grabbing the greens at their crowns and gently tugging with a twisting motion.
• Harvest carrots for the root cellar after the first hard frosts but before the ground freezes.

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