Growing Carrots | How to Grow Carrots

Learning how to grow carrots should be easy, but experience has taught us otherwise. There are quite a number of considerations when growing carrots. This guide to growing carrots should help every home gardener and you market gardeners should learn something about how to grow carrots as well.

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Soil Preparation

It is critical for growing carrots that you deeply work the soil. Our soil preparation strategy actually starts the year prior to actually planting the seed. Jane and I plant a bed of clover (alsike and white clover grow best for us) where the carrots will be grown the next year.

We do have an acre of garden so taking a small section out of actual food production for a season is not a problem. On a small scale garden level just plant a small section of clover or undersow your squash and cucumbers with clover.

Undersowing is simply the practice of planting a low growing cover crop under a taller plant to feed the soil for the next season.

That’s the whole idea behind planting clover; provide nutrition for your carrots the next year. The reason why we do this the year prior is because carrots will not grow properly with too much nitrogen in the soil. If nitrogen is released too soon before planting, even fresh compost or manure there is a negative effect on root crops such as carrots. They get hairy and go a little strange, and they definitely won’t be any good in storage.

So we work in our green manure crop the season before in the fall and practice crop rotation in the garden for maximum results.

As mentioned earlier we deeply till the soil. Our Troy-bilt tiller does a great job but still only tills to a depth of about 6 inches. With many varieties of carrots reaching length of 10-12 inches that just isn’t deep enough.

We have discovered that using a broadfork or even a potato garden fork will reach down and break up the lower layers of soil for optimum growth of those longer varieties.

This usually is my job so I will explain. I take a section of garden, usually 6 feet wide and up to 50 feet long, working backwards I dig the fork into the ground and gently pull back on the handle until the soil breaks up. I work backwards so I am not stepping on the freshly broke up ground.

I dig just enough for the air to get down there. Don’t lift the soil, or turn it over. The mixing of topsoil and the lower layers of subsoil do not benefit the garden. This process may seem like it’s a little tedious but actually it is accomplished over many months, not in one day. Enjoy the process.

Planting- How to grow carrots

Your soil should then be finely tilled with the roto-tiller to ready yourself for planting. Lay out a row for carrots and dig a small trench no more than one inch deep along the row marker. Place one seed every inch in the row. For years I put too many seeds in the row, later having to thin heavily and weed more often. Now I trust that the seeds will grow and I don’t plant too many.

Carrot seed takes up to 10 days to germinate so we throw in a bit of radish seed as a row marker until germination. Put in one seed every 8 inches. Quick germinating radishes provides a convenient row marker and reminder, as well as a tasty snack later on.

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Pests

Jane and I have had a real problem with cutworms eating our carrots. The plants would just emerge and start growing well and then one morning you would come out and great sections of the row would be missing. We usually go to the end of the section that is eaten, and find the culprit and squish it. But , we have found that our growing practices have really been at fault.

We wanted the carrots close to the house, so our other main pest, deer, wouldn’t eat them. The soil at the house is very sandy and dries out quickly, especially good habitat for cutworms! We chose to plant in our main garden which is mostly kind of swampy to deter them, and we plant lots so the deer can munch too.

When to plant

We start planting carrots just before the last spring frost and continue planting well into July. In this way we have many chances to beat the ever changing weather here. Temperature fluctuations and moisture changes can drastically affect yields. We plant often to make sure at least some of our crops make out well. Carrots need consistent moisture at all times during their growing cycle.

We grow upto 300 pounds of carrots so this is an important crop. Harvesting is done in late fall after a few frosts make the carrots sweeter. Starch is converted to sugar in the carrot making them store better and taste better. The deer start in about September and we know it’s time to harvest. Roots go in the root cellar for cool damp storage, as close to freezing as possible without freezing the roots.

They sure do taste good in the winter, and all season long for that matter. A bit of time spent laying out your garden will produce better results.