How and Why to Thin Your Carrots 🥕🥕🥕

good morning everyone this is your friendly reminder to thin your carrots now this is of course going to depend on where you are growing and when you planted but here in zone 6a ohio i planted most of my carrots about mid-march and they're getting honestly a little overdue for thinning so that is what i am taking care of today now the first thing you might ask is if thinning carrots is really necessary it's kind of one of those garden tasks that nobody likes at least nobody that i've ever spoke to but unless you are a whole lot more patient than i am when sewing your carrots thinning usually is necessary let me show you why now carrot seeds are very tiny and an easy way to sow them is just to broadcast so or sprinkle the small seeds along your planting row which works just fine but when they come up you have a whole lot of little tiny seedlings crowded very very close to one another now as the carrot roots start to grow this is where you can run into problems because they become very very crowded they're competing for water and nutrients and the roots can become very misshapen and twisted together and you don't end up with those nice big long straight carrot roots that you dream of harvesting and some folks actually find it easier to do this process twice thinning once when the carrots are quite small and then coming back through and re-thinning once they're a little bit larger that's completely up to you either way works and i kind of do a hybrid of both techniques just depending on how much time i have and how much patience i have a lot of times i come through early and thin them and don't do a great job and then end up having to come back anyway and kind of redo it but ultimately you want to thin your carrots to two to four inches apart that's going to depend a little bit on the variety that you're growing if you're growing a smaller variety you can get away with a smaller spacing if you're growing great big competition carrots you're going to want to give them plenty of room now there are two ways that you can thin your carrots you can either thin them by snipping them off at the base with a scissors or you can pull them again i've done it both ways i tend to opt for pulling just because i often don't have a scissors with me when i'm ready to do this task but i've had luck with both methods snipping them off at the base with the scissors can be done anytime if you opt for pulling them i highly suggest doing it when your soil is moist but not totally saturated having the soil a little bit damp makes it easier to pull the carrots especially if you're working in heavier like a clay soil but if the soil is totally saturated you run the risk of pulling out more carrots than you intend to while doing this task now one thing i do like to do when i pull these up especially if i feel like i've loosened the soil too much is to come back and kind of firm that soil around the base of the carrots that i want to leave in the ground now if you have blank spots or skips where seed didn't germinate and you want to try moving a seedling from a more crowded location where you're thinning anyway to a new spot you can do that they won't always take in general plants with a long tap root like this are tricky to transplant but what you want to do is just make a hole as deep as you can you want to fit that whole root in and sometimes using the smaller roots are better place that in there and then just firm the soil around the base and then give that a good watering and then when you're all done thinning your area i always like to go back in and water them all really well again i find that this helps alleviate kind of any stress that they've been through during the thinning process and helps to kind of secure that soil back around the roots now don't be too alarmed if your carrots look kind of sad and droopy after you're all done thinning them i thinned this whole bed yesterday and you can see here how kind of sad this looked when i was all done i watered them really well came out this morning and you can see how much they've perked back up and look really nice again and also don't feel too bad if the amount of thinnings that you end up with seem like half the total of your carrots that you planted i have been growing carrots for a long time and i still make this mistake every year i way over seed and then i'm thinning out way too many carrots at the end if you want to avoid this you can be very very meticulous when you are seating i don't have the patience i don't have the patience for that so this is not an option for me but a really good option is to get pelleted carrot seed so pelleted seed is commonly available for things that are very small seeded carrots and lettuce are two really good examples and basically pelleted seed is just coated with an inert material and all it does is make the seed larger and easier to handle so it's much easier to plant individual seeds exactly where you want them versus broadcast sewing or scatter sewing a small seed like a carrot now this really does help cut down on seed waste the only thing to be aware of is that the process of pelleting does cut down on shelf life so seed companies will typically advise that you use those pelleted seeds within a year now one extra little tip after thinning your carrots is the perfect time to feed them and to mulch them and i will typically just go in and side dress my carrots with this food i will then water that in really well and then mulch between my rows and grass clippings are my preferred natural mulch for pretty much all my garden crops because we have a lot of grass and it works really well but that will help keep the soil moist and cool which is especially important as we are entering into the much warmer months of the summer here this will keep my carrots really nice and happy and healthy so make sure that you remember to thin your carrots for an optimal harvest and be sure to subscribe for more garden tips like this thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Growfully with Jenna

Views: 30,087

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Id: svHj9lVMwB8

Length: 6min 25sec (385 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021