The Top 3 Problems when Growing Carrots, and How to Solve Them!

[Music] everybody Farmer cam in the prop house today really wanted to be outside to shoot this video and some of the video is outside but I needed to be inside for the clean audio because it's pretty breezy still today my heart is really smiling with how many people I see taking up growing food either for the first time or the first time in a long time there's a lot of gardeners out here trying to make it happen in the context of a pandemic recognizing that this is a skill that's valuable and I think that's really cool we put out some seeds in our front yard just free for the taking on Saturday and in 20 or 30 minutes they were all gone so people are are really taking this seriously and trying to do what they can to provide for themselves and I think that's awesome if you are gardening for the first time or for the first time in a long time I can almost guarantee one of the things that you're gonna be growing is carrots everybody loves carrots you find them in so many different types of cuisines so they're a really popular garden favorite but they can be really challenging I haven't mastered them per se but I have learned a few very important things over the last couple years of trying to grow carrots for market that I think could be really helpful to a lot of you who are trying to plant your carrots this spring so I have three challenges that come along with growing carrots that I'll highlight and then I'll talk about how I combat those challenges when I'm growing carrots in the garden number one is germination germination is quickest for carrots in warm weather say 65 to 75 degrees and if if it's that temperature consistently you could see them germinate in six days maybe even five days but if it's colder they could take up to two maybe three weeks to pop and so you should think about what the temperature is expected to be in your 10-day forecast before you lay down carrot seeds I try to plant in warm weather and it's very important to never let the soil dry out so what I use to eliminate that problem is I use row cover like a floating row cover so I use this to protect vulnerable plants from bugs or vulnerable plants from frost but it's also a really great evaporation preventer so a single layer of this 25 weight row cover across the top of the bed after I put the carrot seeds in buys me an extra day between waterings to try to get those carrots to to germinate challenge number two with carrots is definitely weeds and weeds are difficult for carrots specifically because carrots are slow to grow for their first three or four weeks so they don't compete well if you have weeds germinating at the same time so you have to be diligent and well timed with your weeding I try to weed a bed of carrots twice so the hoe that I use has one edge that's relatively thin it's about an inch and a half wide and that's perfect for getting in between the rows of carrots and I'm just trying to scrape that very top edge of the soil off cut the roots off from the weeds that are just sprouting and leaving those carrots in between in the rows if I see some problematic weeds actually within the carrot row that's where I'll bend down and actually pull those weeds by hand so I'm weeding once a week or two after they germinate and then again 2 or 3 weeks later and after that the carrots should have a canopy with their bushy tops that's dense enough that it shades out any other weeds from really causing any problems don't hesitate to hoe again if you're starting to see weed problems for me it takes about 15 minutes to thoroughly weed a bed of carrots that's thirty feet long so imagine on your scale if you're working you know 8-foot rows or something like that at home it shouldn't take you very long at all the third challenge with carrots is you end up with short carrots and why are they stubby generally short carrots are the result when the carrots hit a hard pan so you've got three or four inches of nice loose soil and then where your tiller skimmed across the you've created a hard pan and they get that and they don't really have anywhere else to go with their tap root carrots can thrive in sandier soils and in raised beds because the soil is not compacted so if you're growing in ground like I do for these micro farms tilling can be helpful for carrots but you got to be careful about again the number of weeds that you're going to introduce into the system by uplifting the bottom you know a few inches of your soil base right and you got to make sure you're tilling deep enough for it to matter so that you can get seven or nine inch long carrots right so what I'll generally do if I want to till a bed so that I can grow carrots in there this summer in the spring I'll grow a quick turn crop like radishes or turnips both of those crops will compete better with any of the weeds that are brought to the system by the tilling and then when those crops come out I can plant carrots in a what we would call a stale seed bed where we know that we've exhausted all the weed seeds or most of the weed seeds in the top two or three inches of the soil so that's how I solve the three main problems when growing carrots in my garden if there are other crops that you're looking forward to growing this summer that you've had problems with in the past please feel free to ask a question in the comments and maybe I'll make a video about about whatever's challenging you in your resiliency garden this year so that's all i've got for you thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Garden Variety Harvests

Views: 26,528

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Id: 7s3sa9eVMWo

Length: 6min 11sec (371 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020