Carrots are now commercially available almost all year round, including from domestic cultivation. With a little gardening skill, carrots can also be sown in your own garden and continuously harvested for consumption.

The right preparation determines the success of the harvest

With the carrots, the foundation for a rich harvest is already laid with the preparation of the soil. This should be loose and nutritious before sowing so that the main roots of the carrots can develop unhindered. Fertilization with stable manure should already have taken place in the autumn before the carrots are planted, otherwise the conditions for the seedlings are suboptimal and pests such as the carrot fly are magically attracted.

Carrots need room to develop

When sowing carrots directly in the bed, less is often more. The tiny carrot seeds should be sown very sparingly in rows about 25 centimeters apart. If the little plants that germinate after about three weeks are too dense, then the delicious roots cannot develop optimally. Since this is the case in most cases, you will need to separate a few plants to make room for lush carrots.

An intermediate harvest also creates space

Basically, carrots do not need a certain minimum size to be ripe for consumption. You can therefore also combine thinning out rows of carrots that are too dense with an intermediate harvest. Carefully pull individual young carrots out of the row to eat them fresh until there is a distance of at least five centimeters between the other plants in the row.

The continuous harvest through staggered sowing dates

Depending on the variety, carrots can often be sown under fleece as early as the end of February or the beginning of March. After a growth season of around three months, the first carrots can be harvested from the bed as early as May. Sow new rows every month for fresh carrots in the garden all summer long. The uses for carrots are extremely diverse:

  • as a raw, healthy snack between meals
  • as treats for dogs
  • as a low-calorie ingredient in mixed vegetables
  • as a tasty puree
  • as a colorful soup ingredient

tips and tricks

If you harvest carrots from the bed in between, you should carefully pull them out of the slightly moist soil. In this way you prevent the exposure of root collars that are not yet intended for harvest.

WK

Category:

Vegetable garden