starting carrots

[sheeshshe]

I want to start them indoors bc the weeds always take them over and those little seedlings are so tiny they just get taken over and don't grow. so, how far in advance should I start them? could I start them like wintersown outside? are they good for that sort of thing?

[rainbowgardener]

I haven't tried it, but I've always been told that carrots don't take well to transplanting. You are growing it for the root, so if that root gets disturbed, you won't have a good carrot.

Carrots are very cold tolerant, so you can plant them outside as soon as the ground can be worked. Starting them early gives them a bit of head start on the weeds. Once they are sprouted and a couple inches high, I thin them out some, weed all around them and then mulch and don't usually have more trouble with weeds after that.

But I'm a very small scale gardener and can do things by hand. That wouldn't work as well if you were talking about a field of carrots.

[sheeshshe]

OK, so I'll plant them as soon as I can and then after they come up I should put hay/straw around it maybe? so that the weeds don't take them over? ya think?

[gixxerific]

definitely outside. I wouldn't waste time planting them inside. Just dig a furrow throw in some seed cover it lightly and walk away. But keep and eye out for them damn bunny's

[Bobberman]

The problem most of the time is a crusted soil! I suggest raking in some wet sand into the top 3 to 4 inches of the soil and covering the carrots for a week with some clear or semi clear plastic! It works great for me! Th sand lets the carrot break the soil and the sand also lets the carrot grow down straighter!

[cynthia_h]

The problem most of the time is a crusted soil! I suggest raking in some wet sand into the top 3 to 4 inches of the soil and covering the carrots for a week with some clear or semi clear plastic!

1) The OP has not mentioned a "problem" with carrot seedlings breaking the soil; she described them being overtaken by weeds.

2) Recommending willy-nilly that people introduce lots of sand into their soil *without* knowing the makeup of that soil can lead new gardeners into inadvertently creating cement in their soil. Clay + sand, without other factors, can create cement.

Carrots want fine tilth. They keep well *after* harvest in sand buckets, as the Nearings wrote decades ago. My carrots grew quite well in a mixture containing very little sand.

3) Re. plastic coverings: most new gardeners--and many experienced ones--lose seedlings to "damping off," a fungus exacerbated by excessive humidity. This humidity can be the result of domes in commercial seeding set-ups or plastic wrap stretched across seeding cells for too long. "Too long" isn't up to the person/gardener; the seedling and the fungus seem to make that decision.

It's better not to use the air-tight plastic wrap, in my experience.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Bobberman]

Sorry I strayed from the subject but the sand will also help the weeds making them easy to pull! Carrots are tender when they first start to grow and transplanting is very hard to do ulless you start them in small peat pots and plant the whole pot!

[applestar]

Indoor starting the carrots CAN be done. I did it for fun and experiment with an extra long maturing variety called Healthmaster and a couple of others. You need to start them in good deep containers and very loosely packed soil mix -- so loose that watering from the top results in 1/2 the soil.

Then when they have a pair of true leaves, no bigger, water thoroughly from the bottom, then out in the garden, carefully dig them out one at a time with a plastic fork and float them in a bowl of compost tea.

For each seedling, you are going to poke a hole wide enough that the wet root isn't going to get stuck on the side and deep enough that the roots are not going to get bent. Suspending the seedling carefully by an expendable seed leaf, pour water in the hole with one hand so the seedling floats in. Pouring the water helps to straighten the root as well. Now basically pinch the hole closed, soil up to the base of the seed leaves, and you are done.

This was not so painful to do, sitting on a 5 gal bucket with a seat lid next to my 18" high raised bed.

I'm thinking the transplanting process might be simplified with a proper tool -- maybe a vegetable peeler or I have a couple of those table cloth crumb scrapers used by fancy waiters that might be perfect for the job. Something that would allow you to dig out a "plug" of soil cradling the entire carrot seedling down to the depth of their roots. Some apple corers also have the proper shape I'm thinking of.

[sheeshshe]

the soil here is pretty sandy already I'm always adding stuff to it to make it less sandy

so side dressing it with straw, you think its ok? are carrots ok to let it come up through the straw or must I put the straw on it afterwards?

[Bobberman]

If the carrots are in a row you could put straw around the row but if they are in a bed I would wait till they get a litter bigger. The weeds will probably grow faser than the carrots so maybe something lighter will work like saw dus or compostt. Saw dust depletes nitrogen so a little blood meal may help!