I use a rating system to help me decide what to grow and it considers lots of factors. The main ones are how tasty it is, how healthy it is to eat, how expensive it is to buy, how big it's harvest is, when it's harvest period is and whether I can buy it organically and if not how much it's sprayed.
Carrots score fairly well in this system and we put a lot of effort into them because they are so healthy, tasty and versatile. The yield is moderate and they are fairly cheap in the shops. It's easy to buy organic ones, which are a must buy, because they are extensively sprayed in conventional agriculture. They also stand well in the ground and are at their best over winter, once they've sweetened up after a few frosts.
Carrots are easy, count up how many you eat each week and sow 20% in March, 20% in April and 60% in June. You can get a bit more fancy, if you want for example salad carrots, or very early carrots from a November sowing, read this guide to help with that.
Growing carrots can be one of the most complex of tasks, or the easiest, depending on your pest pressure, soil type and sowing time. This guide is most applicable if you have sandy soil, carrot fly problems and want to grow a lot of carrots all year round, like me. It should be useful for anyone though.
Carrots can be difficult to grow in the ground if you have clay and/or stony soil but since we have sandy soil carrots are one of the few crops that actually grow well for us. Fortunately carrots grow well in containers, so anyone can grow them.
Carrots are best sown direct and they are often slow to germinate and get started. Once established though they are reliable growers and when sown in mid-late spring they are ready for harvest in about 90 days. Left in the ground they would naturally go to seed in the following spring.
Unfortunately for year round growers if you start your carrots very early in the year they may well go to seed before they are ready for harvest. When this happens the stems thicken and the root stops growing, what's left of the root has a very tough, inedible core.
Carrots generally go to seed in the same year when they experience too much stress early in life, especially cycles of hot and cold.
<aside> 💡 In my worst carrot growing year I had a full bed of February sown carrots go to seed in May and up until then they looked beautiful. But a hot February, followed by a cold March just confused them into thinking they'd already experienced summer and winter and were in their second spring!
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So although it's easy to have carrots from mid-summer until early spring, having them from mid spring until early summer takes a few tricks.
Carrots are one of our favourite crops, we eat them fresh as snacks, in salads, steamed and in all manner of soups, curries, stir-fry's etc. Getting them all year round involves some planning though.
Brief introduction to the topics covered in this chapter
Brief introduction to the topics covered in this chapter
<aside> 💡 For more details on the model that I use for describing harvest periods (first earlies, second earlies etc) please see the chapter on my growing framework
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