How to Grow Carrots in Your Garden: Harvest & Seed Planting Examples - All the Steps!

Welcome to The Rusted Garden Homestead this video is all about how do you grow carrots we're going to do a harvest so you can see what you're going to get and then I'm going to go over with you how to basically direct soak carrot seeds their best sown directly you don't want to grow transplants and then I'm going to show you how to use a sheet of cardboard to help with germination carrots from the time of germination can take about 70 days to mature and you can buy all kinds of different carrot sizes meaning round carrots short four to six inch carrots or longer carrots I have heavy clay soil I like growing carrots that mature to about six inches it really makes a difference carrots here have been growing since April it's June 15th they can take up to 21 days to germinate they're going to do a little bit better now with germination because it's warmer so they do best in the cooler temperatures but you can grow them through the summer and then you can grow them in the summer into the fall again so let's just get to the best point really is the Harvest and this is I believe it's a Danvers variety carrot this is what I want so I'm gonna really go in and harvest all the carrots are going to be different sizes whoop I just broke one you don't want to Rock these back and forth you want to loosen the soil maybe use a shovel then pull them out straight so I have to get the tips out of there but that's you know pretty nice let's see if we can get a couple more just gently try and pull them straight up I mean look at that beautiful you do have to loosen up the soil a little bit so if you're you know subscribing to a no dig Style and these are planted pretty closely together too if you're subscribing to no dig style that's fine and it does make sense but sometimes when you're growing root crops you definitely want to loosen the soil let's pull a couple more out of here so you get the idea this is everything that I've pulled out they look pretty good your carrots upper growth look something like this and you can actually use this in cooking I haven't figured out how to use it yet but people do use it if your carrots stay in too long these are all beautiful they're going to start to flower and they have wonderful flowers they attract pollinators you can see some more examples here that means that I've had these carrots in here a little bit too long you don't want them to get to the point where they're sending out a flower just like in here or it's going to change that basically the texture of your carrot you want to pull these out when you're crisp crunchy sweet not after they've started to flower I mean just look at these I mean and if you have clay soil it can be hard for the growing tip to really work its way down and you get you know Twisted carrots which is not a disease or a problem they're still very very good but we do want to loosen the soil so let me pull these out and we'll get to planting or direct seeding carrots just wanted to show you an example of the spacing about an inch apart is pretty good and it's an inch going in both directions I do plant in the Square if you have disease pressure or insect pressure with your vegetables sometimes it's best to do long rows so I would just do you know a carrot a carrot space like that one row right next to it another row but I would put a bigger space in between so that you have more airflow birds can get in they can look for insects so just depending on what kind of uh problem pressure you're getting your garden you may want to do a square like I do or you might want to do rows but the distance about an inch carrot seeds are small so right here two drop next to each other rather than you know thin them down to just one I leave them in there they're much smaller sometimes they do fine they push each other out of the way grown by themselves you know well given more space sometimes they're a little bit bigger it's really up to you how you want to do it again spacing's up to you if you put too close together this could happen kind of a cool Garden sculpture perfectly edible this is going to make it to Instagram that's a pretty good carrot Harvest for that small space we'll go back to that in a second again I believe they were the Danvers variety but a four to six inch carrot they did really really well tried growing some round carrots don't really like how they produce not really worth it to be honest with you I mean it's just not big enough they were growing the same amount of time so I'm going to get rid of this variety I'm not going to grow it anymore I tested it out I don't like it really wasn't worth the time but these four to six inch carrots are beautiful so that's what I'm going to plant back into that space and here was the space not you know not a lot of room and I got a good amount of carrots out of there now we're going to loosen up the soil first thing you want to do is any organic granular fertilizer doesn't matter what it's called there's all kinds of different names tomato pepper you know fruit leafy green blooming it doesn't matter what type of fertilizer it is it's just an organic granular with NP and K represented you're going to put down pretty heavy handfuls something like that across the surface and we're going to loosen the top four to six inches because those carrots want to go down so I don't want them hitting I don't want them you know hitting tough soil where they get curled up those are pretty straight I'm happy with that so you're replacing some of the fertilizer with Organic granular if you had compost I would throw in two shovelfuls mix it into there that will be perfect for your carrots so let me loosen this up four to six inches deep and then we'll get to planting you want the organic granular to get really mixed through that top four to six inches it's loosened up soil is really dry that's going to be one of the keys is you need to keep moisture in here especially for germination that's how we're going to use the cardboard over there in a second when I was digging in there found the toad which is a good sign because they eat problematic insects but it might freak you out a little bit when you're at least it did me when you're turning the soil and you see something jump at you that you think is a soil looks pretty good I am going to I'm going to add in a couple shovelfuls of compost that I make just give this a little more npn K but mostly to just help retain moisture in here you really want your carrots to have that moisture added my compost and you know if you have it use it if you don't have it you can skip it you can just set it up you know like I was showing you so spread the compost across there and then I just go through quickly mix it in break up any chunks or anything like that if they don't break up nicely just toss them out of the way this is going to really have well this is really going to set up the soil nicely for growing carrots and I'm just going to do that across the whole bed this is how I like to plant my carrots here in Maryland I'm in Maryland zone seven carrot seeds don't like to be pushed really far into the Earth so just a light finger hole about an inch apart my row of carrots consists of two rows so carrots down here carrots down here I consider that one row if you don't have a lot of disease and pest pressure maybe start the next row right over here give it a little bit more space if you feel like you have problems start your next row over here this will give more space for airflow for Birds you know different animals that come in and hopefully tend to your garden for you birds will do that a lot of times with worms and other problems so this is how I like to set it up the other thing is that's an easy four to six inches of loose soil so yeah sometimes you do have to dig and turn your garden you didn't wreck anything in here as your soil gets better and better maybe you don't have to dig it or turn it but especially when you're planting seeds sometimes you have to loosen up that top four to six inches all right let's get to dropping the seeds the carrots I'm growing are part of the Rusted Garden scan and grow collection if you turn this over there's a QR code scan it it'll give you planting instructions and these are the Danvers half Longs carrot seeds are really small they look something like that and I've planted two I don't know if you can see them but I planted two per hole I will thin them down to one and I did a row here a row here and a row here and that's a lot of carrots just for this little space carrots like I was saying are best grown really early spring into early summer or later summer into the fall now that it's June 15th if the soil bakes from the Sun getting up to 80 90 100 degrees the carrots aren't going to grow really well so I'm going to show you how to use cardboard to help them get off to a good start germinate keep the soil cooler they prefer to germinate when the temperatures are below 75 degrees Fahrenheit but I'm also going to use shade cloth to keep the soil cool and this way I can get some carrots over the summer but if it's too hot in your area this video will be great come later August you can plant your carrots and you can grow them into the fall so now that I have two seeds per depression about a quarter inch deep I'm just going to lightly cover them over and then we're going to soak this whole area down the soil was pretty dry even down to that four to six inches so I really want to water in this area water in the seeds with the higher temperatures 80 85 degrees this would dry out really quickly within a day the heat from the Sun is going to warm this up like I was saying to 90 to 100 degrees we're going to put cardboard over this that will keep moisture in there that helps speed up germination of the carrots and what you have to do is for the first it's really seven days you don't need to worry about it carrots just don't germinate that quickly but after seven days you want to peek under there and when you see any germination that's when you want to remove the cardboard and maybe do it every other day after that week just so you're catching them just when you're breaking the surface remove the cardboard keep them well watered you might have to water every other day you may maybe can get away with watering every three days it's really gonna vary but you want to keep moisture in here if you want to subscribe and follow me I'll show you how to use shade cloth right now I have sunflowers all around here which you're actually going to help keep this area a little bit shadier and cooler but I use shade cloth during the summer to really manage down the soil temperatures so that sometimes I can grow cool other crops and it also keeps my tomatoes and peppers from shutting down and again if you follow me I'll show you how I do that so the carrots are in let's get to watering we're not going to feed these anymore that's plenty of fertilizer in there with my compost with the organic granular if you wanted to you could water them in maybe with a fish Emulsion you know one shot deal be done with it but just let the carrots grow after that what you're going to need is water watering is a question I get asked about all the time and I can't give you an exact answer because it just varies depending on the temperatures your garden how big the crops are so because we just put seeds in we want to be careful we don't blast the seeds out of the planting area but we really want to soak in this whole area and I'm going to do this in real time so you get a sense of how much water I'm putting down now remember we're trying to get this down to you know good four inches six inches into the soil that water will be waiting there for the carrots when seeds germinate they send a root down straight typically first that root looks for water the green comes after that the root system is all set up and it can support all that canopy growth and I'm going to go a little bit longer water is the best friend to your garden and we tend to underwater you can't really over water these seeds the soil is pretty good it's going to drain past them it's going to drain deeper into the ground you know we might sometimes over worry about over watering so this is a great soaking now water's there it's to depth the Sun comes out it's going to dry that top one or two inches right where the carrot seed is sitting that's why you have to come out every other day and just make sure you're watering all your seeds that you put out there to keep that water in that top one inch two inches while the seed germinates and sets up its root system the next thing we're going to do is cut up some of this cardboard lay it down here soak it and that's going to keep that top one inch two inches nice and moist through germination this method of growing carrots really works for me I recommend you know you use these as principles you know test them out change them up a little bit to fit your garden I'm only putting down cardboard on two thirds I want to see how the other row does without cardboard I always like to experiment my garden you may have to soak this down a couple of times you want it to soak all the way through to the point that it's no longer rigid and this is of course going to dry first but it's going to protect the seeds from the baking sun it's going to keep moisture in there and remember after a week check this pretty regularly so that you catch it as the seeds you're germinating remove it foreign that's all you really have to do to grow carrots the half lungs are wonderful please check out my seed shop for the scan and grow collection and please subscribe and follow me I'll show you how to grow just about everything you can in a garden and I'll show you how I use shade cloth you can see some of it back there over my broccoli I'll show you how I use it over the summer to keep pepper plants and tomato plants producing thanks for watching

Channel: Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden)

Views: 46,683

Keywords: Gardening, Organic, Homesteading, sustainable, Grow food, Growing Food, Homestead, Vegetable Gardening, Composting, How to grow, How to grow food, How to Grow at Home

Id: n5vZjrr0g5Q

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2023