Tricks for Sowing Carrots- Improve Germination & Spacing

good morning everyone and welcome to my Ohio Garden I am sewing the last of my spring planted carrots today and I'm excited to share with you all this little test that I'm trying this year I hate thinning carrots but I also lack the patience to properly space them when I'm planting carrots are also notoriously finicky when it comes to germination so I am on a quest today to find the best AKA easiest way of planting carrots that will number one improve in speed germination and number two result in less thinning that I have to do I got a ton of great suggestions from those of you who saw my post a couple weeks ago thank you very much for those recommendations so I'm excited today to try some of these methods out number one is a cornstarch gel someone actually shared this with me last year and I didn't get a chance to try it then but I'm doing it this year and I have to admit the C seems pretty ingenious by mixing your carrot seeds into a cornstarch gel you are in theory keeping those seeds nice and moist until germination and also by dispersing them throughout the gel you're automatically giving yourself better spacing here's how I did it I soaked my carrot seed overnight I don't know that you would have to do this step but I do find that in general soaking seeds helps to get a jump start on germination the next morning I made my cornstarch gel for a standard size seed packet which with carrots is usually around 200 to 500 seeds I made a mix of two cups water to four tablespoons of corn starch so I started with cool water in a saucepan added my cornstarch turn the burner on to medium and just continue to stir this until it got nice and thick I then let my cornstarch gel cool completely once this is cool you can see how thick this gets next I took my seeds and poured them into the cornstarch mixture now I did include some of that soaking water just enough to get my cornstarch gel to a really nice consistency next I added the cornstarch gel and carrot mixture to a Ziploc type plastic bag now I am ready to plant to prep by planting area I just made a shallow trench about a quarter of an inch deep in my prepared soil and then I snipped a tiny hole in the corner of the Ziploc bag this allows me to squeeze this mixture evenly or somewhat evenly into this Furrow and this process for some reason I just found bizarrely satisfying so if this works I'm going to do this every single year and finally after I squeezed all my gel into place I'm going to cover that lightly with soil finely sieved compost or my earthworm castings and water this all in well now method number two is seed tapes and you can get these pre-made store-bought or do it yourself This Is How seed tapes typically come in these thin little strips where they have the seed implanted in between two Thin layers of a paper that's almost like tissue paper just a smidge thicker I also tried out the DIY version and I thought I was gonna hate making these I thought it was going to be really tedious I actually really kind of enjoyed these now this is definitely a project that's better suited for those winter months something you could do ahead of time and have them ready for spring planting so I only made one and for these most folks use toilet paper the cheaper the better but other material like paper towels will also work now the typical advice is to cut your toilet paper into strips about an inch wide but in my case I'm skipping the cutting all together and just going three rows of seed wide on this toilet paper I'm making a based out of one part water to one part flour and you can add either more flour or more water to get the proper consistency you just want something like a nice paste and then using a paintbrush or you can use a Q-tip I'm placing small dabs of paste where I want to space my seeds I'm just eyeballing these about an inch apart [Music] and then before that Paste can dry Place seeds on each of these little spots now I'm trying my best to do two seeds per spot carrot seed is Tiny and that doesn't always happen at every spot I know I've got a few more in here but even with two per spot this is going to result in a lot less thinning than I typically have to do with my carrots so I'm going to let this dry for a little bit and these can be stored until you're ready to plant I'm going to go straight out into the garden and plant this when I'm ready to plant I'm just going to make a shallow Trench aiming for about a quarter of an inch deep and wide enough to accommodate the seed tape and I place the tape in the trench and very lightly cover with soil finely sieved compost or earthworm castings and then I'm going to water this all in well method number three is to pre-germinate seeds on a paper towel I found this idea on the art of doing stuff blog and in theory I really like it I've pre-germed my carrot seeds before and it has definite advantages but I never thought about planting the seeds paper towel and all it's almost like a hybrid of the seed tape and the pre-germ method for this method I'm going to take a very damp square of paper towel and place it on cardboard or something else flat and sturdy I seed the paper towel with carrots at my desired spacing so I'm again eyeballing it at about two inches apart across the entire paper towel once all the seeds are placed I'll cover with another wet paper towel and I actually ended up going back and putting a second paper towel on top these were pretty thin and they were drying out quickly then I slide everything into a plastic bag and wait now I check this each day to make sure everything is still damp if not I miss the towels with a water bottle then as soon as the seeds have sprouted typically that'll take about seven to ten days it's time to plant [Music] I'm going to remove all of this from the plastic baggie slide those paper towels off the cardboard and in hindsight I would have done this on something other than cardboard something that would not have absorbed that water and become so flimsy because this is kind of hard to work with maybe just on a dinner plate or something like that once I have my paper towels onto the prepared soil I'll just remove those top two paper towels so that all I'm left with is the bottom towel and the sprouted seeds and then I'm going to lightly cover that with my soil or sifted compost or earthworm castings and again that'll all get watered in well method number four is mixing the seeds with sand and broadcast sewing now mixing tiny seeds with sand Is Not A New Concept you'll often see things like wildflowers and grass seed mixed with sand because it helps to ensure that the tiny seeds are getting more evenly spaced out and they're not dropping 2 many seeds in any one place the general guideline is to use about four times the amount of sand to the amount of seed that you have I'm doing a very tiny amount here but this gives you the idea I'm going to mix these seeds in well and then I'm just gently broadcast sewing this [Music] so just kind of sprinkling my sand seed mixture across the prepared soil you can also put the sand seed mixture into an old cleaned out pepper shaker and then just shake the seed out and then again when I'm done sewing I'm just going to lightly cover with Soil and Water this all in now for my sewing method I know I actually usually get pretty good germination results with my carrot seeds in the spring my main issue is just planting them too thick to plant I just make a shallow trench about a quarter of an inch deep and Scatter sew my carrot seeds then I cover these with a thin layer of earthworm castings I like castings because they're light enough for newly emerging seedlings to easily push up through they provide a very small dose of nitrogen for seedlings without the risk of burning and they're overall a great addition to the soil but this year I'm testing out two tweaks to my normal planting method to see if they help speed germination and the first is covering that seated row with something like a board cardboard or burlap a fairly common suggestion to help improve carrot seed germination is to keep the seed covered with something like a board just until the seed starts to sprout my grandpa always used a board and I've heard from quite a few people who just used car cardboard or burlap over their seeds I actually use the board method quite often in my summer sewings because at that time of the year it tends to be much warmer and drier and I risk my seed and my soil drying out much more quickly that board helps to keep the soil nice and moist and cool I've actually never done it in the spring so I'm curious to see if it affects my results at all so I'm actually doing one of each I've got a group of seeds covered with a board a group of seeds covered with cardboard and a group of seeds covered with burlap the key with these is to peek under those materials every day because as soon as you see that first tiny little Sprout of green you want to remove your material I'm also testing out one row covered with my little mini greenhouses now I like this method a lot in the spring because when I want to do early sewings of things like carrots or beets or radishes and it's still quite cool using little cloches or mini greenhouses can create a nice slightly warmer more humid environment that will hasten seed germination a lot of you asked about this little row cover that I showed in my last video and this one is from Gurney's and I'm also actually using just a humidity Dome off of one of my seed starting kits as well but you could also easily create your own kind of homemade version of this just using a standard humidity Dome and poking a few holes in the top now this one is heavy enough I didn't have to weight it down the one from Gurney's I did pin into the soil with fabric pins just because we get a lot of wind this time of year and that will be blown right off if I didn't now I'm very curious to see between these little mini cloches and the burlap cardboard Board Test which of these actually speeds up seed germination more my gut is in the spring it's going to be the mini cloches but we will see now with the cloches as soon as those seeds germinate and are up a quarter to a half of an inch I will remove them now they're a little more forgiving than the board or the burlap in that I don't have to get them off immediately but I don't like to leave them on long term now one option I do know for certain that helps with that thinning issue is pelleted seed it is so much quicker and easier to plant out tiny seeds like carrots when they are pelleted now unfortunately I don't have any pelleted carrot seed this year but I'm just going to show you this pelleted lettuce seed that I have because the carrots are going to look very very similar to the lettuce once they're covered in this coating you can see how the process of planting and spacing correctly is helped along with these but the pelleted seed is definitely a spendier option and ultimately if you want to know the one thing that probably helps the very most with carrot seed germination it is to keep the soil and newly emerged seedlings consistently moist and cool probably the biggest issue with lack of germination in carrot seeds is that the soil is allowed to dry out and or if it is too warm now maintaining moist cool soil is definitely easier in some climates than others here in Ohio for a spring planting it's usually not too much of a challenge in early spring I'm usually dealing with it being too wet versus having the opposite problem but it can be a very big issue when I am trying to plant carrots in the summer for a fall sowing one of the easiest fixes is to install a drip irrigation system them with a kit like this one from drip works I can just set up irrigation along each row of my carrots turn it on for a short time every day and make sure that that soil remains consistently watered now while again I don't need it this spring I will be setting up my drip Works kit for planting my carrots this summer now I will be sharing all of the results of these test plantings so if you're not already be sure to subscribe so you don't miss that video and in the meantime if anyone has any additional suggestions for improving carrot germination or making the task of thinning and spacing a little easier be sure to drop a line in the comments below and let me know thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Growfully with Jenna

Views: 130,076

Keywords: tricks for sowing carrots, sowing carrots, planting carrots, how to plant carrots, ways to plant carrots, best way to plant carrots, reduce carrot thinning, improve carrot germination, grow carrots, growfully, growfully with jenna, growing carrots, how to grow carrots, how to grow carrots from seed, germinating carrot seeds, germinate carrot seeds, planting carrots from seed, homegrown carrots, carrot seeds, vegetable gardening tips, tricks for sowing carrots youtube, carrots

Id: 2ScEjDu3C7s

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 10 2023