How to Sow Carrots Seeds (The simple trick to good germination every time!) | Gardening Tips

hey guys what's up it's Jess welcome back to roots and refuge farm I'm in my garden and today I want to share a little tip with you guys about the most foolproof way that I know the plant carrots when you read lists from gardening resources that list off super easy to grow varieties carrots usually don't make the cut carrots can be a little bit tricky but that doesn't mean that you can't grow them they're just a few things you should know like the fact that carrots won't germinate if it's over 80 degrees so if you're starting to grow these in a summer garden and you live in a really warm place it doesn't matter how well you sow them if it's hot outside they're not gonna go very far also they need to be at least 40 degrees to germinate very well at all you need at least a little bit of warmth to get them up out of the ground right now I'm sowing these carrots in February here in zone 7 be our ground is not frozen but it never really freezes and we've been having a pretty mild winter however if it does drop below freezing again the carrots will be fine they can handle a little bit of frost so I feel pretty good about selling them right now for us though we can't grow carrots through the summer because it's far too hot they don't develop any sort of root if they're growing through the summer they pretty much just developed tops and then they go to seed putting off flowers and seeds so they're definitely a spring and a fall crop for me aside from a general pickiness over at the temperature carrot seeds themselves are just a little bit difficult to deal with because they're tiny teeny tiny which makes them a little hard to space and also hard to maneuver and it makes them very easily misplaced you can't plant carrot seeds very deep at all because they won't have enough energy whenever they sprout to make it to the soil if they're planted too deeply and the other thing is is they require pretty constant moisture to germinate and it takes them with everything being ideal circumstantially about 11 days to come up out of the soil so as you can see there are a lot of factors and it still is a long termination so you kind of have to maintain those ideal factors for long enough so I learned a tip I had several people suggest this and I have found this to be the most surefire way to sow carrot seeds to sell your carrots you're gonna need a space that has nice loose soil carrots will grow in soil that is less than ideal like if you're dealing with clay soil but they just don't grow well and they certainly don't grow pretty if you want nice straight carrots that aren't forked that don't have three legs and and all of that you're gonna need pretty obstruction free soil I'm growing them in my raised beds I have really great success growing beautiful carrots in raised beds with good soil but if you're growing them in the ground it can work too but you just want to make sure your soil is nice and and loose as possible the other thing you're gonna need is a board I like to use an untreated board that really doesn't matter the size it just depends on how many carrots you're wanting to grow the reason why you want it to be untreated is you're gonna set this on top of your soil and your seedlings your seeds as they come up to seedlings for two weeks or so there's a lot of yucky chemicals in treated wood so an untreated board whatever size area you're trying to grow carrot and what I've done here is I've just taken this board and pressed it into the soil so I kind of can see an indention so I have the size of the board in mind you can see here I just flipped it over pressed it in so I've got a line I know what kind of space I'm planting here and I just flipped it over and now I'm actually gonna take my watering can and water this first soils good and loose I've raked it up a little bit with my fingers it was already nice and prepared for planting it was weeded and I'm gonna go ahead and water this really well so the soil is nice and soaked now I want you to notice here as I'm watering this but because it's not perfectly even there's some run down into these areas some runoff and that's the kind of stuff that makes carrot sowing so difficult because if I had planted those seeds first and then watered it they would have all washed down into that area and on how to clump a carrots come up in that one area but the way we're gonna do it is going to help avoid that because the thing is is that even if you have a really great garden you're gonna have just these tiny little rivets in the soil that that happens and that's one of the reasons why this can be difficult so what I like to do is just get my seeds in my hand not a ton of them but enough and just go ahead and start spacing them and I'm not actually even putting holes what I do is just drop the seed and just barely press it into the ground I'm actually not covering it I'm just barely pressing it into the ground so that it sort of sinks down into the soil I'm planting these about every inch and a half and it's really hard not to drop more than one seed that's okay we can send them and we will send them as they start to germinate but we are going to end up sending them so this is one of the reasons why I don't like to just just broadcast them because I like to do as little thinning as possible and also just like to waste as few seeds as possible for me dropping the seeds onto the soil that's already wet and just pressing them down I can actually still see them there but I'm just pressing them down into the soil and I'm actually gonna do that about every inch and a half for the entire space here that I'm gonna put this board over so if you'll see here my planted carrots looks something like that they literally are just seeds that I've pressed right down into the soil and you can still see them the next step and I've got a movement irrigation to scare horse in the process of doing that so I'm going to take this and just flip it right over the top of the seeds that I just planted just give it a good press to make sure it's coming in contact with this soil and so I remember what I've got here stick that little marker those are black nebula carrots now the idea of putting this board down is that it's gonna keep my seeds in place it's going to keep the soil moist it's gonna keep it from getting too hot in the Sun and also if we get a big rain which is forecasted for us here in the next couple days I know that my seeds aren't going to wash away the water will soak into the soil it will actually help keep the soil moist where they are but because that board is over them it's going to keep them from washing off now we'll come back and check on these you want to start checking for sprouts about five or six days after you plant them it's pretty unlikely for it to be that soon but because when those sprouts do come up they're gonna need light soon so you don't want to risk them coming up and then dying because they can't photosynthesize so we're definitely going to start checking in five or six days I'm expecting it to probably be more like 10 or 11 as soon as they start sprouting well I'll just show you what to do next when that happens I'll see you here in a few days all right guys it's been 16 days since the first half of this video and I just removed my board and I want to show you guys what I'm seeing okay guys see all these little sprouts here and it was probably hard to see exactly what you're looking at because they're really pale since they haven't had sunlight much yet but there are lots and lots of sprouts coming up here through the soil that's super exciting great germination rates I see lots and lots of little sprouts I just out of my own curiosity I actually didn't make a video about it but the day that I sowed these underneath this board I actually just went and sowed some the exact same way without covering them in one of my other beds just because I was curious to see and I've been watching that area as well and there I cannot find a single germinated seed we've had a lot of rain and so they probably got displaced or buried too deeply let's go up to the greenhouse really quick to talk about this because it is very well all right I just wanted to come in here and talk about a few things kind of head off some questions that I could see you guys having I wanted this to be as clear as possible for you first things first you may have noticed that I had a row cover on my garden bed had I thought about it I probably would have shot this video and planted these carrots in a different garden bed just so there would be no confusion that actually we put that up a while after I saw these carrot seeds I don't think that row cover had anything to do with the success of the germination underneath that board however we have some really cold days coming up I did so a lot of seeds in that bed and now that I've removed the board and I have those tiny little seedlings I'm glad they have an extra little bit of protection from the cold but I don't want you guys watching this video and getting through to the end going oh man I can't so care it's like this because I don't have row covers that has nothing to do with the germination I've sowed seeds under the board's before with no row cover and they germinate just the same as Easter another thing that I wanted to address was watering I have not watered those seeds a single time since we sewed them together 16 days ago we've had a lot of rain Oh quite a lot of rain and even though that board was covering those obviously the soil was staying pretty moist because of rainfall if at some point you're trying this in circumstances where your soil is drying out and you're lifting up the first thing that I would do is I would make sure the board is flat on the ground and with something like a watering can I would water all around it really feel like the surface of your soil needs some moisture underneath that board lift it up and use a spray bottle really the whole point of the board is to keep those seeds from being displaced and to make sure that they stay in the right conditions and so it defeats the purpose if you lift it up and water it with the hose another thing just a piece of information that I wanted to pass on because I had read this a while ago it's always been in the back of my mind but I've never felt like I needed to do this I read a tip when you're sowing carrots underneath the board that if you're you realize that they've sprouted and so you're gonna take the board off you don't want to leave it on too long after they've sprouted because they'll die they'll run out of energy they need the sunlight but let's say you realize that but you also realize that you have a really big thunderstorm coming through a rain showers coming through and you're worried that those little delicate seedlings are still going to be at risk of being washed away one thing that you can do I've never done this because I've never felt the need to but you can take your board and prop up the ends of it with like some bricks or blocks or rocks or something so essentially it's up off the ground some inches but still over the top of your seedlings and essentially what that's going to do is allow enough light in that they can live but protect them from it and any heavy rainfall I obviously that that would be circumstantial that you would even need to do that I've always just taken it off and that's been fine but I could see kind of being in a dilemma of being in a place of having a lot of heavy rain but realizing that your seedlings are making their way up and that might be a solution I wanted to give you guys a case you find yourself in that situation overall I think this is a really great method to overcome some of the struggles of honestly a variety of plant that is difficult to germinate carrots can be difficult because they're so finicky about being not getting dry and not getting too deep they're so easy to misplace so I just wanted to share this with you guys and hopefully it will bring success to your growing endeavors homegrown carrots really are amazing especially compared to their store-bought counterparts and I would love for you guys to all get to experience that thank you so much for hanging out with me today I bless you until next time [Music]

Channel: Roots and Refuge Farm

Views: 824,540

Keywords: roots and refuge, roots and refuge farm, small farm, backyard farm, growing carrots, how to sow from seed, growing food, gardening tips, gardening hacks, gardening advice, beginner gardening, beginner gardening vegetables, roots and refuge garden, roots and refuge carrots, how to grow carrots, how to grow veg, organic gardening

Id: gpXvQVSS1Hg

Length: 12min 44sec (764 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020