HOW TO GROW ORGANIC CARROTS

[Music] first crop is carrots what I'll do is I'm going to talk about how I do carrots and then Ray will talk about how he does carrots because then you get two different situations on opposite ends of the continent so they'll offer some different contexts for you guys so carrots are they can be a relatively high value crop for me they can only be high-value if I do them in the summer because if I plant them in the spring they take 76 to 80 days to grow so that doesn't meet my criteria of what's a fast crop I want 60 days or less so to get 60 days or less if I do them in the summer starting in like late May or early June they can be a 60 day crop and I can do a few plantings up until my last planting which would be the first or second week of August that's enough to get a 60 day crop to hold into winter and then be harvesting that crop all throughout the winter like what I have now if you my YouTube this week is all is all pre loaded so I've got videos coming out today Wednesday and Friday and sat and Sunday you I think one in one of my videos there I'm gonna show you my greenhouses my caterpillar tunnels with what's what I've got for carrots going on so you'll see if you check it out what's happening in there in the winter but so carrots can be a high-value crop for me if they weren't I probably wouldn't grow them on my farm with the size that it is but there's one thing I learned this year which is the best way I've ever grown carrots like 100 percent germination total game changer for me was putting a fresh inch of compost on the bed and then direct seeding right into the end of the bed from there 100 percent germination even in the dead of summer whereas when I was doing soil prep like this prepping it up and planted into the soil it was always spotty whether it was pelleted seed or not I'm not using petal pelleted seed anymore I'm just using raw seed my two favorite carrot varieties are mohkum and nelson mohkum is a good overwintered carrot and a decent earlier carrot nelson is a really good carrot for the hot summer and I grow carrots a little bit bigger than Ray I'm not getting ten bucks a pound I get two fifty to four bucks a pound but I grow a me sighs carat basically big enough that the core and the carat isn't really big like if you're selling to restaurants the if you want a high price which is in my from my experience is $4 a pound then you got to have a corliss carat so it can't really be much thicker than your thumb and it's got a snap and break really easy so so I so I do that by getting it out of the ground quick so I'm trying targeting a younger carat that the advantage of that is that means that I'm I can do a younger carat at a higher price per pound I can plant it at a higher density and I can get it out of the ground faster so by planting more and getting it up quicker I'm getting a better yield at a better price in a shorter timeframe so that's like that's perfect that those three things there are almost the basic principle two to everything that makes my my crops profitable and so what I'm doing is a nicely I'll do the bed prep like just shallow cultivation and we're gonna do all that if you haven't seen it yet and then we just finished with a nice layer of finished compost not much different than what they have back over there by the packing shed if you haven't seen it you can just see a fresh pile of brought in compost there we've finished that leave it on just rake it into place so that it sits on the bed and then I'm direct seeding right into that and I'm getting a hundred percent germination right now we're yielding 300 pounds per hundred foot bed that's with no tops that's just chopped carrot 300 pounds of four bucks so I do 50 foot bed so we're getting 150 pounds on a 50 foot bed at 4 bucks a pound that's 600 bucks from one crop keep in mind that I'll plant 3 other crops after that right so in my book when I talk about the high rotation beds and I say and a 50 foot bed I can get $1,600 that's part of it but if I'm getting yields like that I'll go over that 1,600 bucks per bed sometimes I'm into the 3500 even 4,000 dollar range per bed if I can get it dialed in and perfect and that's what some of that initial prep is all about if you want perfect crops you got it might spend a little bit more money because you know that might be on a hundred-foot bed if I were to come in here put finished compost on here that might be twenty dollars a compost but twenty bucks on a $600 crop yield is insignificant because the alternative is really patchy germination and they've had it here so Ray has had it so ray why don't you talk about what you're doing now to plant flank carrots and what's working yeah okay so the same so we've always had a major problem with with with germinating carrots really every year it's been just terrible so what what we found is our German you know we plant a little later than you because our Falls are a little warmer or longer yep but so typically will will will seed carrots you know middle late July maybe the first of August kind of staggers and it just so will get so hot and so dry human I don't know for whatever reason we just always had really bad germination and I think a lot of it had to do with our soil that that top happens the soil would dry out if it dries out even a little bit it's just not for us it doesn't ruminate so what a few things we did this year is we actually prep this whole plot and tarped it so these were tarp for almost a month and again so our whole killer patch is here it's like this is the care beds when you come here what you have this whole system is all done here and we also were going to try several different things so we kind of wanted to have a comparison as far as the actual field so what we did this here is we were basically noon to beds every week to help kind of stagger it so what we did is you know we would pepper bed broadfork it amend it we will not put any nitrogen down because what what and then you'll actually see here I think we actually have too much nitrogen down on the previous crops which was greens and our tops were just way way way too big yeah tops or big roots are small and you have too much so you know you know to have a note we're making of coke a make sure the previous crop doesn't have as much nitrogen so what we did is we would prep it we have the soil really nice and we got that four row pinpoint cedar and we kind of came through here and use that cedar we would water this for two hours and then we would tarp it immediately I mean what I have to look maybe like an hour to to kind of dry down a little just a little bit and then carrots were germinating about four to five days jail or to five days that's fast normally in 32 nine and now so that's with the white side up there was one week it was really really hot and what we did is we actually have the sprinklers on timers to help cool off the actual tarps so if you're really really hot you're concerned about it just you overhead irrigation again it does seem like a lot but if you have a market for carrots and you really like growing them you know all these little steps help make for successful care termination so this whole experiment which is to figure out can we improve our termination and so what we found is we had perfect termination and it was just too much just way too much and so we I wish our germination was 50% which normally was but what we're having is his so much foilage and the past two three we do start my part of humidity was really high and so it's just we're having really major disease in our greens so mind you we were really only aiming to sell baby carriage so it's gonna work out for us so again it's just this year there's another major farm or the in Memphis that was funded by a billionaire they ended up you know we were having really hard time growing crop because you know having a successful farm does not you know money is not going to make you successful it's really having a good plan so what happened is you know we didn't realize but all the sudden we were the only Karen farmer in town in Memphis so now we're just we're getting a lot of orders again it's just this here doesn't mean we're gonna get ten but that's what people are happy to pay it because no one else is growing it so in our contact this works out they actually don't want tops anymore so what we're gonna do is we're basically there's going to crop it all out that they're small they're not all perfect and we're just gonna top it clean bag it and putting a walking cool and we'll short for a month and just basically ask the quotas come in we'll just pull the orders and it's just there and storage that's what's great about carrots so for us in northern more northern clients even even Virginia where you get a winter that's that's what you want that's the great thing about carrots is the storage so that if you suffer for me what like I've got a hope I've got a 2,000 square foot area block that's all carrots going into winter so what I do is I work around the weather so I've got caterpillar tunnels over it now so they've established they've grown themselves without the tunnels and we just put the tunnels on last week now that's going to keep them alive going into winter so if I get down to like minus 10 Celsius which is probably zero to five degrees Fahrenheit I can't go and harvest those in that weather it's too cold but what I'll do is I'll wait for a sunny day and if I'm not watering the crop in the winter which is you don't need the water in the winter if it's if it's you know anywhere near freezing you're not watering anymore so what what happens is that the carrot stay on the ground they actually stay dry so what's really happening is they're not growing any more it's too cold there's more or less dormant and sitting there the ground is effectively acting like a storage facility for you so I wait for a warm window of weather and then I just so it might be for me above just above freezing outside but if it's sunny or even on a cloudy day the caterpillar tunnels will be warm like that you could you could take your sweater off and it's warm I can actually go in and fork out carrots and all harvest if I look at the forecast and I go okay I've got a warm window here I'm gonna go and harvest myself a month's worth of carrots now and seize the opportunity and then I might sit on those carrots till Christmas and then maybe a little after Christmas I get another window I can go in and harvest more and store them that's that's well that's how we'll do it it's not like in the summer where you can just come out and harvest whenever you want and whenever you need it it's got to be you got to choose windows of time and it's that principle there is almost the same with a lot of the winter stuff we do if it's the spinach or lettuce in the winter and it's in cold frames or or unheated greenhouses we're just waiting for windows of opportunity that's the best time to harvest because they even spinach can sit for a couple weeks I mean I wouldn't sell it if it was two weeks old but I would sell it if it was a week old because I can harvest a bunch when the weather's opportune and then and then sell it throughout the week yes again a lot this is just context you know and now that we know we kind of have the whole germination thing figured out we'll actually back down on our bet on a row so maybe we'll go down to four or four rows yeah so what so what I do with carrots is I actually go seven rows on a thirty inch bed and I do the compost i use the jiang cedar i use the roller on the jangled the XY twenty-four and I put down seven rows and again I'm targeting a baby carrot so I'm not I'm not expecting a full-sized carrot like this I'm targeting something like that fingerling carrot width of my thumb tops and that's what I'm that's what I'm looking to do so you know different context tray might that density might not work in that in an in a debt in a draw or a hot humid climate but for myself you know you guys in Spokane will be similar like hot dry that that can work great when you're waiting for that sunny day to harvest in the winter months for storage wise are you still putting it in your in your cooler if it's staying you know below freezing in the ground oh no once I pull it out it's got to go in the cooler it's got to be stable temperature like if you store it in an in a in a shed or something like that and you're getting down below freezing and you're getting up that stresses the crop and it'll it'll it'll spoil yeah you got to have a stable temperature to store it you cut the top when you're storing them how do you actually store them oh you mean yeah we're gonna do it we're gonna do it in a second but I just want is there any other questions about we market no god no farmers market great question they will not buy carrots unless it's hash tops so we're currently really not pushing front of wheat we actually have one guy who is actually picking up some crop and selling at a market a little bit but it's it's it's very little so yeah farmers market I mean every farmers market is different I actually moved when I was still doing markets I moved more carrots in bags it's really easier yeah and my I'm on the west coast and so everybody's concerned about nutritional density and so get carrots do not have the same nutritional density when the greens are on them they lose it by the day the greens soak up the nutrients from the carrot right because the the top is what's photosynthesizing the top is what it's growing the root is storage for the top so the longer you keep taught and that's why I don't understand what people want tops like it's ok I get if you feed them to your rabbits or if you juice the tops but as far as the carrot nutrient density goes it's lower with tops on so I actually moved more of them in bags because my community are really like health hippies and they they want that stuff but so here's here's the deal here's a deal yeah yeah here's the deal with top so too is keeping the tops on your carrots is a hassle to wash them it's like four times as long to wash carrots of talks because you have to eat you have to bunt you have to manage each bundle to wash them whereas when you're doing loose carrots you can throw them on the washing table and just spray them down and you move them out quick so I carrot washing time is like four times greater since we stopped doing bunches and I actually find it's faster in the field it's also faster to sort them you know if you're doing bunches often you're bunching them in the field and if you're not bunch them in the field it's even more of a hassle because you pulling all these carrots and greens and then you're handling all that and you're taking it to the post harvest and then you're you're sorting them and bundling them again the greens get all tangled up it's very time-consuming and labor some so I I'm not a fan of doing tops but you know sometimes it does command a higher price so it makes sense yeah sure yep just a clarification question when you're sowing your carrots you prepare your bed like we've seen down there and then you see them yep and then you're covering them with a tarp or a fabric with with with the white black stylist heart okay with the white side facing up and if the outdoor temperature exceeds whatever your watering 90 degrees yeah okay it's right and then you're covering your prepared beds with a fresh layer of compost yep and is that heavy wet layer or is it just that it's watered good I mean carrots all here's actually one thing I forgot to mention I'm glad you asked this question what we do when it's really hot is I do the compost as I said seed right into it I roll a shade cloth on it right on the soil because water goes through it and then I water it as normal that gives me the best when it's really hot you know the compost on its own like I did I did a couple trials where as compost of the shade cloth and then some width and when it wasn't scorching hot the ones without the shade cloth did just as good but when it was in August and we get 110 fahrenheit in our summers up to 110 so at that time like those weeks the shade cloth was a must it outperformed the beds without compost so with the show without the shade cloth sorry it is there a difference in laying the shade cloth on the ground versus keeping it off the ground if you're doing it just for germination I like it right on the soil directly on the crop because you get the very least amount of evaporation and you're holding that moisture because it's a two-fold thing there good good finished aerobic compost will hold moisture better than anything else but then the shade cloth on top of that is also preventing the wind from drying it out moving back and forth or the Sun beating right down on it so that those two things really really make it yeah and one thing too about covering your soil for carrots is if you do get a really heavy rain it's not gonna wash all your seeds out I'll tell her that the FASTA me determination was like four days that's crazy so what you have to do is you have to check it like you got to be careful because if you left on if you left on a day longer in a hot you know Tennessee summer forget about it they'll turn to mush when your first year no sprout up yours taking the cover off yeah I was really impressed when he told me that this summer because I was like that's involves Eman like I I would be scared to do that that I'd miss the opportunity but I mean if you got if you're walking your field every day or twice a day you just make sure your staff are checking those yes and then once they're good uncover I just get moisture and it never dries out that and you know listen I mean we we we try to keep automatic timers but things happen you know you know what time you know cow got out and busted a water pipe and there was a geyser and so if you're gone for the day you know that's it and with Karis like we only have you know in some case you only have a one week window and if you miss it you're gonna so it's so we found with with with with carrots you really only have a short window where like feeling like arugula or baby kale we'll just plant and the next day yeah here it's a really finicky cuz the thing with a clay soil too is that what happens is when it dries out it concrete's yep and you get that cracking on the top like that's like when you talk about like Midwest Dust Bowl from over tillage that's what happens and that's where carrots will just fail like they won't germinate through that as soon as you get that crust it doesn't Germany so I guess that's the idea here with Ray on the tarp is that you're keeping the moisture on the top and the soil soft so that as soon as those carrots break through you can take that off and that soil might get a bit crusty on the top but they've broken through and they'll they'll be resilient they've got their top root down they'll grow through it but they won't break through in the germination you know again at that point I'm looking for the first sign of a germinated seed so once I see it pop through in a few it's go is its uncovered and then I have that automatic water between two to four times a day so it's so that way it never dries out yep yep you know it again Bob that's it we'll talk about this more with lettuce later but I I have you know ideal times and in cycles but you have to watch the weather because I can oddish was actually cooler for us in September yeah and so as a farmer the first thing you should do when you wake up in the morning is check the weather like I mean sometimes places like someplace is a british columbia where i live you're better off just sticking your head out of the window then check in the forecast because you know forecasts will change so fast but the point being is like you always got to be looking ahead so like you know we all have these smartphones now you know that is my most used piece of gear on the farm believe it or not be i use that more than anything else i got different apps on here i'll talk more about it later in the workshop but i wake up in the morning i look at the one week forecast i look at the one week forecast twice a day because i want to know i got to think ahead and on the production on the farm I'm always thinking three weeks ahead and then when I go and look at my field and I'm thinking about what am I gonna harvest and what I'm gonna plant I'm thinking three weeks ahead especially with the harvest when we go do the greens we'll talk about it a bit more but I'm going like okay I'm harvesting this this week I'm gonna harvest that the next week I'm gonna harvest that the third week and then I'm gonna have a second cut on that in the fourth week I'm always thinking ahead and I'm making notes about what I can expect so that's it for the the prerogative crop do this now we'll talk about the harvesting and cut more questions some guys throw in flame weeding right where that germination yeah okay good that's a good question okay let's let's talk about that that's a great question a lot of organic farmers especially the big ones actually not even just a big one big ones are all doing this like Bar None if you can't grow organic carrots a little flame weeding but what they're doing is they're doing their bed prep and then they're planting their carrots this is often with tillage farms then they're going what they could even do is put a glass jar on one of the rows on the bed and then that they planted and then when that when the carrots germinate under that glass jar flame leave the whole bed and then the next day carrots pop up because what the jar will germinate a day or two before the other kick so that's actually an Eliot Coleman thing he said that but Elliot Elliot still came from the school that were tilling beds constantly so a lot of the new market gardeners aren't always tilling they're doing shallow cultivation so that that strategy you know still be used if you're really worried about weeds you can you can do it you can do it all like you can prep with the tarp especially on a new farm you're gonna have a new farm you're gonna have a year of really bad weed pressure so combining that with your silage tarp strategy your stale seed bed all that kind of stuff that's just gonna add an extra level of weed management so you can you can do your bed prep or you can prep your bed wait until the weeds go if you want to be really hardcore flame weed it then plant your carrots and then come back on day six and flame weed it again or you might do a combination of race thing put the tarp down pull it off when the weeds of germinating flame it you know there's a variety of ways you can do it but that's just another layer of complexity but also weed management any more questions on on the stuff so far because we'll do some harvesting with these yep so if you got you got a yellow yellow so hey yellow totes better yeah it's gonna be stronger so depending on your soil conditions sometimes you can just pull carrots out of the ground I think Ray Ray has been saying that because their carrots are really small and they're relatively shallow they're can just pull them out but I find it that if I start tearing greens off see like this I'm not gonna do it because then I'm losing crop so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna work a section of bed at a time I'm gonna come in and I'm just gonna loosen a couple rows like this so we've loosened the soil now these can just come out really easy right and then that way you know I can be a bit faster about it whereas if you're teasing a Moute without loosening it you got to be a little slower if you don't wanna break off the green so I like to move fast and so I'm just gonna I'm gonna tease out that stuff and if we're doing these without tops then I'm gonna come over here and I'm just going to break go like this [Applause] yeah not if you want to get the top off the root you what what you're saying I'll show you what happens when you do that I used to do them this way actually it just depends on your customer it depends the product you want so if you want to do the bunch and twist it so some chefs actually want an inch of green on there and if that's what if that's what they want then what you said works then you can go like this and you know some of them you'll get that and some chefs want a bit of green on the top it just depends you know what you said actually might work with these two particular carrots these carrots the greens come off a little easier than mine but you what you're saying might actually work cuz there's a reason why you're coming from the side and not like up the road just because I want to just I'm just now I'm just gonna work here not so that's just just so I'm not stepping on anything I mean yeah I mean you could do it this way but I don't want to step on my bed yeah so that's why I'm coming at it from the side in here yeah exactly well that's the thing that's why I don't like because I sell these in grocery stores in bags and that's why I don't want the top because the top starts to rot is it then the customer doesn't want it but the carrots still okay the carrots okay but it's just those kind of aesthetics that people don't wanna see that but I mean like I said with the some chefs like they want that you know and then when they finish that on a plate they'll just have a little bit of green on there but they want it fresh like they're not gonna sit on those carrots for weeks whereas that might happen in the grocery store [Music]

Channel: Urban Farmer Curtis Stone

Views: 219,318

Rating: 4.8883529 out of 5

Keywords: gardening, how to, growing, urban farming, spin farming, vegetables, greens, growing better, high yield crops, get started, sustainable, soil, local, permaculture, off grid, homestead, curtis stone, curtis, green city acres, profitable farming, the urban farmer, suburban farming, convert lawn to garden, urban agriculture, market gardening, tennessee, memphis, carrots, how to grow, organic, small farming, ray tyler, rose creek farms, cash crops, sustainability, make money, grow, agriculture

Id: 2D7eezL_Sas

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2017