Carrots are good. They’re good for health, they have a good taste and they’re good to have in your garden! I know a lot of folks who consider growing carrots a tough ask, primarily because of the small size of carrot seeds. But while the tiny seeds do pose a few problems, there are some easy solutions! Here’s how you can grow carrots from seed with relative ease and a great deal of success.
Pick a sunlit site with rich, well-draining site for growing carrots. They’ll make great neighbors to tomatoes, cucumbers, and peas. Also, with their fern-like foliage, they’re a great option for the garden border. You can plant carrot seeds any time the ground is thawed. The simplest way of planting carrot seeds is by creating rows. Use your hands or a garden hoe to make the rows, leaving a gap of 1-2 feet between them. Next step- Make the seeds easy to handle. There are a couple of ways you can go about it. You can either mix the seeds with a few spoon fulls of fresh coffee grounds or with a handful of sand. I’d also recommend adding a few radish seeds to the mix. Radish seeds sprout earlier than carrot seeds and will make it easy to identify the location of carrot seeds. Walk along the rows, scattering the mix as you proceed. Cover the seeds with soil. Using plastic sheets to cover the rows is a nice way of making sure the soil around the seeds stays moist. But remember to remove the sheet before irrigating. Carrot seeds will take about 2-3 weeks to germinate.
Irrigate regularly in order to keep the soil damp, especially during the dry periods. Depending on the variety of carrots that you’re growing, they’ll be ready to be picked between 2-4 months.
Pretty simple, isn’t it? One reason why I love to grow carrots is that it’s very exciting! You can easily involve the kids in the act and have a blast all the way from sowing carrot seeds to harvesting carrots from your garden. Just make sure the kids wash them well before they take a bite!