How to Grow Carrots - A Complete Guide

[Music] [Applause] hey you all farmer jesse here gonna do a crop specific video today and probably a few more over the coming months and in this video we are going to cover carrots and a bunch of detail discussing the varieties i like planting planting schedules soil prep germination harvesting tips marketing strategy the works because carrots are kind of a difficult crop to grow but it doesn't have to be that way so let's do it first things first if you're not subscribed to this channel make sure to hit the subscribe button and if you are subscribed you're awesome and if you gain something from this video or any of our videos you can always support our work at patreon.com no-till growers so i don't know about you but i learned a long time ago that it was basically impossible to satisfy the demand in our market for carrots we could sell practically every carrot we grew uh well within reason but but carrots are one of those crops that can be a massive pain in this to grow successfully primarily for one reason weeds so the first thing we need to discuss with carrots is of course soil preparation carrot seeds require anywhere from six to even 30 days to germinate depending on the soil temperature the variety etc so that would be like 30 days in the winter maybe 12 or 14 days in the spring and maybe six or eight days in the summer either way compared to most directly seeded crops that's a long period of time for a seed to germinate and that's what makes weeds such an issue with carrot production weeds get a solid shot at establishing themselves with very little competition before you can even see the carrots now there are two main approaches here you can take our breakthrough with carrot production first came when we started coupling uh the flame weeder with stale seed bedding now we would effectively get a bed prepped that is to say get it all the way ready you know for seeding uh with a nice tilth and then we would not seed it we would simply saturate the empty bed we would let any weed seeds germinate then very very lightly harrow out those seedlings that's what i'm referencing here when i say stale seed bedding immediately following that we would sew the carrots uh at the end of the bed we would sow a handful of beet seeds as well when the beet seeds germinated which happens on average you know one to three days before the carrots we would flame weed over top of the bed and the carrots would effectively come into a relatively clean growing space now i don't like the flame weeder it's unwieldy and time-consuming and propane consuming and there are certain things like grass and red pigweed and violets and green onions and just that all just sort of laugh at it it's also literally the only truly dangerous tool i use and with all the carbon around on our farm it usually results in some small fire i also don't love how long beds stay out of production in this strategy in this particular strategy i say it all the time but if a bed does not have photosynthesizing plants then the soil is not being fed but rather it's feeding on itself so when i discovered deep compost mulching that kind of changed the game for us um it went from requiring several days between one crop and carrot seeding to being immediate in other words i could clear one crop and sow the carrots just straight away or sometimes i could sew the carrots in between the existing crop that was about to come out because weed seeds were no longer an issue because of the compost mulch to my photosynthesis loving heart that was welcome to news all that is required for this is a deep layer of well-made and weed-free compost somewhere between somewhere between four and eight inches deep or whatever that is in metric that compost is then spread over top of a clean bed as a mulch and a growing medium and crops are planted directly into it super simple and clean clean in terms of weed seeds but also in terms of how the carrots look at harvest there's not a lot of mud on them and the carrots are relatively easy to pull from it from compost speaking of easier harvest the other consideration for soil prep is to broad fork or not to broad fork unless you have very deep and loose soil like you might in a sandy environment i'm going to recommend that you broad fork before planting so you do not have to fork the carrots out at harvest um which is way slower and damages more carrots in my trials when i fork relatively dense soil before planting 9 out of 10 times the i can simply pull the carrot out of the soil with no forking needed that's a huge time and energy saver on busy harvest days and i mentioned sandy soils there but know that as long as you take care of your soil you don't really need sandy soil to grow carrots that's kind of a misnomer it's carrots grown in sandy soil do tend to be straighter uh but from our experience in our market a little curvy carrot is rarely frowned upon [Music] i put it on the right way this time a quick reminder here that if you have any tips or tricks for carrot production add them in the comments um as always i don't have a monopoly on all the good ideas or good advice so please add your two cents you do need to address soil fertility before moving on to the actual seeding part but i don't have a lot to say there carrots are great nutrient scavengers because they have such a deep tap root and are generally considered light feeders so they will do most of the fertility work for you they do need a fair amount of phosphorus and too much nitrogen can be an issue but consult an agronomist before you add any amendments like that i usually add a small amount of a good inoculating compost before broad forking just to ensure good biology is around the roots is around the seeds like maybe five to ten pounds per 50 foot bed and a little kelp as a biostimulant otherwise i do not really add anything else others may have different opinions on that so make sure to check the comments okay so after soil prep comes seeding i'll discuss varieties uh in a moment but first let's talk density the easiest way to break this down both for seed ordering and seeding is simply seeds per foot per row foot now most seed purveyors sell carrots by the ounce so you will have to do some math but because many of our bed widths and lengths are going to be different from each other um let's just talk seeds per row foot if you're after reasonably large carrots a seeding rate of 12 to 16 carats per foot is a good baseline depending on your cedar which we'll discuss shortly that gives you roughly one inch spacing with a little extra in case of poor germination one little digression here i spent some time in the scientific literature reading about different studies that have been done on carrot spacing and it's common spacing for commercial carrots seems to be about 1.5 inches apart keep in mind these are the large carrots you see in large bags in restaurants or in commercial food production or even in slightly smaller bags in grocery stores um the closer you space your carrots the smaller the root is going to be with that in mind on our own farm because we sell a lot of what we would consider maybe a large baby carrot um maybe six to seven inches long so we aim for closer to 20 to 24 seeds per foot that gives us roughly one half inch between a perfect stand of carrots now i also pulled our instagram followers and out of over 200 responses 49 of growers said that they spaced their carrots at one inch apart in the row 31 said that they spaced their carrots at 1.5 inches apart in the row and 17 percent said only a half inch and i know for a fact that a few of the growers who voted are really great growers and looking at their votes i was surprised at how much variety there was no two growers seem to approach carrot spacing the exact same way because no two markets in available growing space are exactly the same so for smaller carrots bank on slightly closer and for larger carrots slightly further apart in the row i also read up on and pulled for distance between rows like how far apart the rows should be from one another and of course neither pole was scientific but it seems that most growers who do tighter spacing space their rows six to seven and a half inches apart we usually aim for seven rows on a 48 inch bed anyway what the literature seems to say is that more the more dense the planting the longer the carrots may take to size up but the more yield you may get out of the bed so let me say that again sometimes denser spacing will actually yield better it just takes longer to grow there is a threshold there though somewhere where the carrots are just a little bit too dense and you will only get small carrots though it's not clear where that threshold is exactly i would perhaps shoot for spacing closer to one inch as you dial it in then you know the density may depend on soil health time of year watering and variety so do some trials and take notes generally though avoid thinning it's just a time suck so unless the stand is less than one half inch between seedlings on average probably i would probably not suggest spending your time thinning that's up to you but if you are gonna be thinning the research kind of suggests uh that the best time to thin is as early as possible so basically thin the carrots as soon as you see enough carrots to thin okay that was a deluge of technical information and numbers and if you prefer to have it all just written down i suggest picking up a copy of my book the living soil handbook specifically from notegrowers.com where when you buy it from us the proceeds go to making you more content like this but also there is a whole section uh on carrot breakdown so yeah check that out all right so let's talk varieties and planting dates because those things vary for us based on the time of year our first plantings go in around mid-january in the cat tunnels for this i plant half mocham or napoli which are 55 day carrots though they will take 30 days just to germinate when planted in january so more like 90 to 100 days to maturity from seeding in the winter and i also plant atlas parisian market carrot at this time a personal favorite but also a market darling uh they are sweet flavorful stubby round carrots and i get asked all year when we're bringing those things back they're so tasty they are 70 day carrot so though so be prepared for how obnoxiously slow they are but you can really pack those into a bed that's our best yielding carrot by far been a big hit we also do a round of all three of those varieties in tunnels in february a few things about these early carrots is that well first we are in zone 6b central kentucky i think that's important but second any winter stone carrots must get covered to avoid bolting bolting is a huge issue for spring stone carrots because they are biennials so if the carrot believes that they went through a whole winter they will try to go to seed it's super annoying and when they bolt or flower they become possibly a cut flower which we don't sell flowers it's not really helpful for us and it's not really possible to save the seed either because at least for us this is the time when queen anne's lace or wild carrot is flowering so yeah crossing is likely and bolting is no good gotta cover them also i personally do not try to speed up the germination at all i have no i've not rigorously tested this but from my experience um the slower they are to germinate uh in the colder time periods like the winter the less likely the early carrots are to bolt um but like i said i have not that's not science that's just my experience so our first open field carrots are sewn in mid-march i find that the colorful carrots like starburst bolt very easily so i don't start sewing any specialty carrots like that until mid-march at the earliest but preferably mid-april i'm also still rolling with napoli and mocam at this time in march though if i have a bed if i have the bed space i will also put a longer season carrot in the mix for me i like to sew carrots in batches but with staggered days to maturity that way i can guarantee a long harvest and i'm not having to seed and germinate a single bed every week but rather i sew three or four beds all clumped together every month where the conditions are the most favorable um that's just easier for me though your situation may be different anyway the longer season carrots i like currently for summer and storage are yaya bolero though bolero seeds are literally at least double the size of regular sea carrot seeds for some reason so adjust your cedar accordingly and romance though i do trial a new variety every year again i always sow a couple short season carrots like napoli or mochum um and then some of those summer carrots at the same time and i generally seed four beds per month from january through october uh the october seeding is for late winter early spring harvests if you sow a short season carrot in a tunnel in october here that bed should be ready by january or february in the field you really want them sewn by mid-september last year however my last september carrot seedlings got wiped out by a four inch and four hour downpour so that sucked and i didn't get my usual overwintered fall carrots this spring [Music] that's one of the challenges of deep compost especially on new farms where the soil may not yet be ready to absorb seriously excessive rain events like we have here if the water doesn't have anywhere to go it will go straight across your beds taking your compost and seedlings with it i don't use pelleted seed this is a good note i do know a lot of other growers do it's just generally a little bit more expensive and i've often felt like i don't get quite the same germination but you can get perfect spacing with a pelleted seed so if you can dial in germination it may be worth it all right real quick speaking of seeding i use the jing cedar i used to use the xy 24 seed roller which is the one with the little x carved into it uh but i lost it so i started experimenting with the f24 that's f as in frank 24 is in that show with kiefer sutherland and i put the brush all the way down and what that does is it just drops two to three seeds per spot but i spread that out over 1.5 inches on the chang which is the 11 in the back 11 in the front and i also took off that screw for easy access and i just put this little bracket that's pro tip so again 11 in the back 11 in the front you should get two 11 sprockets with your jane kit i don't know if that comes from everybody we got ours from paper potco i've also used the earthway seeder i used to use the light carrot plate that you have to purchase extra separately but the carrot plate that comes with the earthway is fine it can just put them down a little thick in my experience though a lot of good growers use that heavier seed plate with that little lip on it that you can see and they love it so maybe if using the earthway space your rose a little further apart to allow for more lateral growth and a little bit better airflow i've heard of growers using the four row pinpoint cedar as well and just filling every other hopper there are a ton of seeders out there and a ton of different options and if you have a good uh you know setup or strategy make sure to put that in the comments that could be helpful to somebody else last note on seeding is that the depth of the planting is really important you don't want your carrot seed more than a half inch in the soil or that will affect germination so between a quarter inch and a half inch is ideal if you're planting into really loose compost closer to a half inch has worked has been the best for us this is a long video i don't know what i'm going to do about b-roll i may just like throw in some random spider shots now germination uh carrot seeds cannot dry out before they germ period that's game over it is imperative to keep your carrot seeds wet until you see sprouts in the spring in our region we do not have to do much of anything special for this the soil stays pretty moist if it seems dry at all though we will irrigate because it's in critical in the late spring and through the summer we soak the beds that have our freshly seeded and then cover them with a silage tarp white side up you know white side up so you don't actually kill them like occultate them and that keeps the soil nice and wet and cool for several days this requires a lot of attention so that you do not get super leggy carrot germs after four days we check in the afternoon every day for germination when we see a sprout we pull the tarps off that evening to avoid intense sun exposure and to allow them to establish overnight the same method works for beets as well and you don't have to use plastic on a small scale you could use pretty much anything that is not going to directly heat up the soil too much so so i don't know cardboard wood whatever you have one additional trick i learned from jared smith at jared's real food that if you ever have really poor germination in your carrot seeds you do not have to terminate the whole bed and start over simply put plant head lettuces in the gaps so essentially if you have a pork poorly germinated seed bed and but you don't want to kill it all put in head lettuces so we always have an extra tray laying around we keep one on deck at all times it's a game changer you can just shove lettuce wherever you have gaps you can also use green onions and beets and probably some other things for that same job as they grow pull a carrot from time to time just to check and monitor growth and if your soil prep was decent they should just pop out of the soil no problem in harvest if not you will have to fork them out which is a pain like i mentioned we always rubber band our carrots intended for market in the field as we harvest them as they say add as much value as you possibly can to the crop every time you touch it if you want to see our washing setup watch this video here our goal is one or two bunches of this sized carrot per row foot so that would mean between 350 to 700 bunches per 50 foot by four foot bed but it's usually somewhere in the middle as long as the stand is good for the farmer's market we leave the greens on most of the greens but we'll remove them for retail because the greens will steal sugar and moisture from the roots we pile carrots very high on the table remember pile it high and kiss it goodbye so we pile it high uh in bunches and sell them at one bunch for three dollars or two bunches for five dollars a bunch is kind of subjective but a bunch is usually around half a pound of carrots or more um give or take but we don't measure them in the field that would be far too time consuming and honestly sometimes people want slightly smaller bunches and others want slightly larger bunches i just let the market sort that stuff out if you ever have more carrots than you can sell remove the tops and store them in a bag with a little bit of breathability not too wet perhaps you can move them later or find a retailer who wants bagged carrot carrots in my experience are not super hard to move and they store really well so kind of a great crop perhaps in the future i can do a carrot pest and disease video but for the most part we don't have a ton of those issues in the past our biggest pests have been carrot fly or carrot maggots in the summer which rarely do enough damage for us to ruin a crop but if it becomes a problem for you you may want to start employing some sort of insect netting fungal diseases in the foliage are usually about poor air flow so consider wider spacing if that becomes an issue root rot is usually about poor soil drainage so improve your compaction and drainage in those areas seriously bite the bullet and broad fork if you have to you can usually see the issues in the foliage as they will appear stunted and yellow again maybe as i come across carrot issues i can piece together footage for a more helpful compendium there is uh so much more i could say about carrots but i think for now i will wrap it up um there and let you all say everything else in the comments section like this video if you liked this video and make sure you're subscribed to this channel also subscribe to our patreon at patreon.com no-till growers that is where we got the idea for this video so make sure to do that also make sure to pick up a copy of my book the living soil handbook from no-till growers.com specifically when you buy it from there it goes into making these ridiculously long videos perhaps but also all the content that we create also this video was paid for in part by a grant from southern sayre otherwise thank you all for watching we'll see you next week bye [Music] [Applause] i

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 280,766

Keywords: carrots, market gardening, carrot production, carrot science, growing great carrots, carrots without weeds, weeding carrots, weed free carrots, weed free gardening, no till, no dig

Id: x3i1C_6vsD0

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022