Growing carrots

Carrots are still the most important vegetable grown, consumed and sold. Nowadays, carrots can be bought at any grocery store all year round. However, the greatest benefits and maximum vitamins come from the carrots that you grow on your own plot. The fresh root vegetable that you extract from the soil will provide you with incredible health benefits. But how to grow carrots outdoors?

Carrots grow very well, especially if you follow the planting and growing techniques, as well as the rules for caring for the carrots.

Like any crop, carrots should be fed. This is usually done in the spring before planting and also throughout the season. This article will discuss how to grow carrots in the open field, what rules must be followed when caring for carrots, how to feed them, what and in what quantities.

How to grow carrots outdoors - sowing dates

how to grow carrots outdoors

Before you sow carrots in the garden, you need to decide on the timing of the harvest. This will depend on the purpose for which you are growing your carrots.

You can sow carrot seeds in early spring. This is approximately mid-April - mid-May. Here, at the beginning of summer, you can use carrot greens for making soups, and by the end of summer, root crops will ripen.

You can sow carrots from the second half of May to mid-June. Here the roots will ripen closer to October. These carrots are usually grown for long winter storage.

If you sow carrots before winter, this is the end of October - mid-November, then you can enjoy sweet vegetables even earlier, before all other vegetables are ripe.

You can choose any place for landing. The main thing is that it is not wet and that there is no stagnation of water during heavy rainfall or melting snow.

If you sow the carrots at different times, you can enjoy the harvest throughout the year.

It should be noted that if you plant carrots before winter, you do not have to worry that such a pest as a carrot fly will spoil the crop. Since the insect develops later than the roots will grow.

How to grow a good harvest of carrots outdoors and prepare the soil

how to grow carrots outdoors

The culture is completely unpretentious to care for. But at the same time, if you pay more attention to it, then the harvest will be much richer. So, the optimal place for a garden is an open, well-lit by the sun, a site. Because carrots are very fond of warmth and light.

The land should be fertile, preferably loamy-sandy. It is good if it contains 4% humus, as well as a neutral acidic reaction.

Solanaceae are excellent precursors to carrots. As well as corn and legumes. It is not recommended to sow carrots in those beds where greens were previously grown. For example, parsley, fennel, dill.

It should also be remembered that you should constantly choose a new place for carrots.

You can often see crooked, funny roots with bizarre shapes. It is, of course, beautiful and sometimes used for decorative purposes. However, for the fruits to be even and beautiful, the soil must be loose, ideally peaty.

Best of all, this is the land where the swamp previously dried up.The fruit is worst formed in clay, hard soil, because it cannot germinate smoothly.

After the harvest is harvested, the land is dug up in late autumn. They also cleanse the remaining roots and debris, remove stones. It is not worth digging too deep, as this can disturb the fertility of the earth. You should dig up the ground to a depth of no more than half a meter.

And in the spring everything should be thoroughly loosened.

Sowing methods for carrots

There are different ways of sowing carrots, which differ significantly from each other.

You can sow carrots seeds... This is the most popular and fastest method. Dry seeds should be evenly scattered into the grooves on the prepared planting sites.

The disadvantage of this method is that the seeds are highly consumed, since after germination they still need to be thinned out so that the root crops are spacious and comfortable to grow.

Now seeds are released in the form of pills. The seeds are placed in special granules containing a nutritious shell. In this case, they germinate evenly and at the required distance.

The main thing here is to sow them carefully, one piece at a time in small depressions. This form of seed release is somewhat more expensive. But then you do not have to remove excess shoots, while damaging the neighboring root system.

Some gardeners germinate the seeds before planting, so the seedlings will emerge much faster. However, if the summer is dry and there is little rain, then it is necessary to water the plants a lot and regularly. This must be done so that weak immature sprouts do not die or dry out.

There is sowing method seed, pre-uniformly glued on specially prepared strips of paper. The finished rolls just need to be laid out in grooves and covered, as it should, with earth.

Thorough watering and fertilization is very important here. Carrots will also sprout evenly and amicably, but the seedlings may be delayed.

Some summer residents boil paste from potato starch. After slightly cooling the mixture, add mineral fertilizers to it. And the seeds are placed in the resulting composition and mixed thoroughly. The paste is evenly distributed over all furrows, as a result of which the seedlings also turn out to be friendly.

After planting, it will be very good if you cover the beds for a couple of weeks with a film or covering material before shoots appear. This will help prevent premature weeds. And also the earth will not dry out, forming a crust that interferes with the normal circulation of air and water.

Seed preparation for sowing

If you are sowing ordinary seeds in a garden, then it is better to prepare them first. You can soak the seeds for a while in hot water, about 40 degrees. But it is better to disinfect them in a weak solution of manganese, which is diluted in a proportion of 1 g per half a glass of water.

It is not necessary to keep the seeds in the solution for a long time, 20 minutes will be enough. After that, the seeds must be thoroughly rinsed and dried again.

At this time, a lot of different drugs are sold - growth stimulants. But these funds have many opponents. Therefore, if you want to grow environmentally friendly root crops, then you should use only natural fertilizers.

How to grow carrots outdoors. Feeding Secrets

If you want to get a large harvest, and so that there is a lot of it, you need to apply a sufficient amount of fertilizer and not neglect them, especially when it comes to preparing the soil in the fall. In general, carrots should be fed throughout the season.

For the first time, root crops are fed after the shoots have appeared. In about a month. To prepare the solution, you need to place one tablespoon of nitrophoska in a bucket of water. Nitrofoska is a mineral fertilizer that is most often used by gardeners.

It contains all the necessary substances: calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen.The same composition should be fed to the carrots a second time, after a couple of weeks. The last time the carrots are fed is in August.

To add enough potassium to your plants, it is best to use a tincture of wood ash. In order to prepare the correct mixture, it is necessary to dissolve about 150 g of ash in 10 liters of water.

This solution is thoroughly mixed so that the powder is completely dissolved in water. This will be a concentrate, which should be further diluted when feeding in a proportion of 1 liter per 10 liters of water. It is necessary to water the carrots with the solution, and you can also water the beets, starting from about mid-summer.

It is very useful for the good formation of root crops to spray the aerial part of the plants from a spray bottle with boric acid dissolved in water. The proportions are observed 1 teaspoon in 10 liters of water.

Watering

During the cultivation of this crop, it is necessary to very carefully water the plants, because if the soil is dry, then the carrots may die altogether. And if the soil is too waterlogged, then the roots will rot, and they will have to be thrown away.

After you have planted your carrots, you need to start watering immediately.

Best of all, in order for seedlings to appear quickly, sprinkler irrigation is suitable. And also drip irrigation is very useful. So as not to wash out the seeds and soil.

After the seeds have germinated and shoots have appeared, depending on the amount of precipitation, it is necessary to water the garden every two or three days.

When the roots begin to form, then the irrigation regime should be changed. It is better to water the beds rarely, but very abundantly.

Further, also as the root crops grow, watering should be done no more than once a week. But the amount of water must be sufficient for deep penetration and for the growth of root crops.

About 30 days before harvesting, watering stops altogether, even if the fall is dry. If the beds are watered at this time, then the fruits will be very poorly stored. Besides, it will spoil their taste.

The only thing, before harvesting, you can water the garden a little so that the soil is moist and the roots are pulled out more easily.

How to grow carrots outdoors - weeding and thinning

As much as we would not like, nobody canceled weeding. Because if the weeds are not removed, the harvest can be very poor. Or it may not exist at all, because the weeds will crush the young shoots.

To keep weeds as small as possible, cover the newly sown beds with newspapers, paper and cover with foil. Here, in addition to the fact that the earth warms up well, it helps to retain moisture in the soil. In addition, it is difficult for weeds to grow under such cover.

After about two weeks, the shelter should be removed.

After the first true leaf has grown on the plant, you can already start weeding. Carrots must be weeded very carefully, as the roots of neighboring carrots can be damaged.

When the second real leaf appears, you can, if necessary, thin out the seedlings if they grow too often, and at the same time weed the beds. The optimal distance between seedlings should be about three centimeters.

Also, removing unnecessary seedlings, this must be done strictly upwards so as not to harm the roots of neighboring plants.

It is very convenient to do thinning with tweezers, as this tool allows you to take the smallest sprouts. It is necessary to weed carrots throughout the growing season, because weeds are constantly growing.

But, simultaneously with weeding, the soil is loosened, which has a very beneficial effect on the development of root crops.

A month after you have completed and thinned the beds with carrots, it is worth thinning the plants again, since the growing root crops need a distance of about five centimeters from each other.

However, those roots that you pulled out now can already be used for cooking, or consumed fresh, since they have the largest amount of vitamins. Young root vegetables are very fond of children, because they are soft, tender and sweet. Plus, they're easy to chew on.

Thus, growing carrots is painstaking and time-consuming. However, a large and beautiful harvest will greatly delight you. Carrots are very beneficial for both children and adults.

It can be prepared fresh, or it can be stored all winter. After all, this ingredient is almost essential for the preparation of any dishes: soups, side dishes, meat dishes, as well as various snacks. Carrots work well for juicing. You can combine it with pumpkin and then get the maximum benefit for the body.