How I Sow and Grow Carrots

Over the years, I have tried several different ways in which to grow carrots.  From direct sown into the ground, to multiple sowings throughout the year.  Now though, I have settled on two methods.  One method for growing outside, and making the most of the weather and main growing season and the second method for growing inside, and extending the growing season each end of the year.

Method 1 - Growing Under Cover

Growing carrots in a raised bed inside the polytunnel has proven to be a bit of a game changer.  It's gives me the ultimate control over the climate in which to grow them, also allowing for an early start.  Not only that, but it's easy to get several crops through the year, including some late crops through until Christmas and beyond.  Plus, there is the bonus of additional protection against the carrot root fly.  A raised bed inside a polytunnel means that I don't need to cover the bed with mesh.

Around late January, it's time to put the raised bed in place.  I start by making sure there is an area of bedspace available in the polytunnel.  I then put down some form of membrane, to stop any weeds coming up through the carrot bed.  This year, I've used an old compost bag.  Once that's down on the underlaying soil, the wooden raised bed is just put on top.

This raised bed isn't particularly big, but it allows me to grow what I need to grow in it.  A larger polytunnel would naturally allow me to have a bigger carrot bed.  

I fill the raised bed to around 2/3 full with spent compost from a previous year.  This can either be from the last years carrot harvest, or from last years potato buckets.  But, the most important thing in the whole process is that no matter what goes into this carrot bed, it MUST be sieved.  The secret to preventing carrots from forking is to make sure as many stone, sticks and clumps are removed from it as possible.

Once we've reached about 2/3 full, I then add around half a sieved back of multi-purpose compost, and give it a good mix, rolling my sleeves up and getting stuck in as if it were a big cake.  Finally, I'll sieve in either some very well rotted manure, or some home made compost.  Carrots don't need huge amounts of nutrients to grow.  In fact, it's said that if you ease off on the nutrients a little, it encourages longer roots as the carrots extend down, looking for more nutrients.

The last part of this initial piece of work is to water the compost well, with a full can of water being added to the bed.  Then, it's time to just leave it all settle for a couple of weeks.  As the compost settles, it may sink an inch or two which is fine.  The bed can be easily topped up with more sieved compost before any sowing takes place.

From here on, you could just following the sowing guidelines on the seed packet.  But, I have found that you can end up using quite a few seeds for a small areas of space, only for you to have to thin a vast majority of the seedlings out after germination.  To get spacing right, and to cut down on seed use, I have found that by using one of my hard plastic cell trays as a guide, I can rest it on the surface of the compost, use a dibber to make a small hole in the compost by poking the dibber through the bottom hole of the cell tray and in that way I can get evenly spaced carrots around the whole surface of the bed.  I can then sow 3-5 seeds into each hole before covering them over.  Once germinated, I use a small pair of scissors or something similar and cut out the smallest seedlings of each clump.

After a first sowing and harvest, I then switch to harvesting carrots grown outside, but will come back to do a second sowing in the polytunnel towards around the middle of the Summer.  It is this sowing that will be left to grow, and then when ready to be harvested, have their green growth cut back, but the carrots themselves will stay in the compost.  They will stay there quite happily for several months allowing us to pick them off as we need them through the Winter.

Method 2 - Growing Outdoors in a Bathtub

This method of growing often turns heads, but essentially is just a repeat of growing undercover.  An old bathtub is used as a makeshift instant raised bed.  Again, it is ideal as it allows you to control exactly what the quality of the compost or soil is like.  Regardless of what type of carrots are grown, the preparation is almost identical to that of growing under cover.  Any compost that is added to the bathtub is sieved.  The only difference with the bathtub method is that the compost tends to stay in the bath year on year, so when I get it ready at the start of the year (around mid to late February) I will dig around the bed to loosen the compost up, and sieve through the compost roughly to remove any clumps that have been formed in the 12 months previously.

During the course of a growing year, the compost level in the bathtub will also drop as the compost continues to decompose.  I will add sieved fresh compost or well rotted manure to bring the compost up to the level of the top of the bathtub.  If no manure goes in, then I will often add some blood, fish and bone into the mix too.

A couple of weeks before sowing, I will cover the bathtub with some acrylic sheets to start warming up the soil.  When it comes to sowing, it's back out with the cell tray for setting spacing, and using the dibber to make the small holes of where the seeds will need to be sown.

When sowing in the bathtub, I tend to sow half the bathtub first, and then sow the other half a couple of months later.  This allows me to harvest carrots from one half while the next crop grows in the other half.  For the first sowings of the year, the acrylic sheets get put back on top of the back after the seed has been sown to provide protection from heavy rains and to continue to help warming the soil up.

After germination has taken place, and the warmer weather starts to return, the bathtub gets covered in mesh.  Though from being raised, it shouldn't get affected by carrot root fly, there is no harm in adding another bit of protection.

And so the cycle continues.  One half growing, the other half harvesting.  If I think there is enough time left in the year to keep sowing outside, then I will.  Carrots will keep in the bath in the same way as they keep in the polytunnel, but they do need to be protected from the rain if they are left in there for an extended period of time.

Depending on the shape of the bathtub, you can end up with some quite curvy carrots at times!  At the end of the season when the final harvest has been made, the bath is covered with weed membrane and left until the following year.