10 Tips For The Perfect Carrot From Your Garden

Whether carrots or roots: With these 10 tips, you too will be able to successfully grow the classic in the vegetable patch.

Not only popular with rabbits – carrots are a real long-running favorite in German vegetable patches. After all, the orange roots are not only delicious, they can also be harvested fresh from your own garden for a long time. With these 10 tips, we will show you how easy it is to harvest crunchy carrots instead of wrinkled beets.

Tip 10: The agony of the (variety) choice

There is now a wide variety of carrots that differ in terms of their location, taste, and shape. If you prefer something a little more unusual, you can even grow white, yellow, or purple carrots in your own garden. But which is the right variety for your garden? To be able to nibble fresh carrots throughout the gardening season, it is advisable to plant several varieties. Early-ripening varieties can be harvested as early as the end of May and late varieties into autumn.

Tip 9: Location and soil

The soil is crucial for the carrot, after all, it is the root that is harvested later. The carrot prefers it to be loose and sandy. If, on the other hand, the soil is loamy or if stones block the way down, the roots tend to form further peaks. Bizarre growth patterns or poor growth can also be signs of unsuitable soil. Before planting, you can improve the soil with high-quality organic soil such as our peat-free Gardender organic tomato and vegetable soil to create optimal starting conditions for the carrot. Otherwise, the carrot likes it sunny. However, you should avoid neighboring beds with celery, fennel, and parsley. These not only need the same nutrients as the carrot but are also attacked by the same pests.

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Tip 8: Sow

Carrots are not particularly sensitive to the cold. Therefore, early varieties can be sown from the beginning of March, under a fleece even from February. Before sowing, however, the bed should be well prepared. Loosen the soil and remove stones from the earth (if possible). Then make several grooves about 3 cm deep in the ground, into which you can sow the carrots, each 2 to 4 cm apart. There should be a distance of 20 cm between the individual grooves. Radishes or dill can be planted here. Not only do you use the space optimally, dill even promotes the growth of the carrots.

Tip 7: Thin out

It may feel wrong to pull plants that you have sown yourself out of the ground, but for a good carrot harvest, thinning them out in the meantime is a must. If the carrots are too close together, they take away the nutrients from each other and only grow poorly. So you end up with more carrots, but they are very small. In addition, the carrots can grow together or form bizarre shapes that also hinder their growth. It is better to sort out sickly and poor plants as well as plants that are growing too densely at an early stage. Thinning is best when the plants are about 5 cm high. This gives you a better overview of how many carrots actually need to be removed. If you don’t have the heart to throw the little carrots on the compost, you can simply move them to another part of the garden.

Tip 6: fertilizers and nutrients

Unfortunately, “a lot helps a lot” does not apply to the orange vegetables. Carrots are mean eaters, which means they need a constant supply of nutrients. They react to a sudden high nutrient content with strong leaf growth, but we want to harvest the roots and not the carrot leaves. You should therefore refrain from using fertilizers when sowing, even if you actually want to do something good for them. Instead, you can work green manure into the soil in the autumn of the year before sowing the bed. Deep-rooted plants such as oil radish are ideal, as they loosen up the soil additionally.

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Tip 5: Water march

Carrots like it moist. Especially immediately after sowing, it should be ensured that the soil always retains residual moisture. The bigger the carrots get, the less water the plants need. In fact, you should now make sure that the carrots do not get too much water as they grow later. Otherwise, the plant will put too much energy into its leaf growth and the size of the root will fall by the wayside. So if you want to harvest large carrots, you should pay attention to a balanced water balance.

Tip 4: Stay underground

Since carrots are not very competitive, it is very important, especially when they are young, to regularly remove the weeds between the rows. With this measure, the heads of the carrots can be accidentally freed from the protective earth. If this is the case, the heads should be covered with new soil after work. If part of the carrot is left exposed to sunlight for too long, unsightly discoloration will occur, which in extreme cases can also affect the taste.

Tip 3: when flies fly

The carrot fly is the most feared carrot pest. The fly lays its eggs near the ground, the larvae then eat their way through the carrot root. What remains are putrid, inedible carrot scraps. If you want to protect your carrots naturally, you can grow them in a mixed culture with onions or leeks. Flies avoid the smell of these plants and therefore do not attack the carrots. A suitable plant protection net can also help against small insects. If you have already had a carrot fly infestation, you should not plant carrots on this bed for at least three years. The larvae of the carrot fly overwinter in the ground and can thus also infect newly planted carrots.

Tip 2: Abundant Harvest

There is no perfect time for the carrot harvest. The bigger the roots get, the more intense their taste becomes. If you prefer something milder and sweeter, you can harvest the carrot earlier. Of course, it is also possible to harvest some carrots early and let the others still grow so that the carrots always come fresh from the garden. In general, it takes about three months for the carrot to be ripe. The carrot can easily be pulled out of the earth by pulling on its leaves. In the case of heavy soils, it is advisable to loosen them up a little beforehand. The leaves should be turned off immediately after harvesting, otherwise, the carrots will quickly become limp and dry out.

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Tip 1: Carrots for the whole year

Carrots can not only be enjoyed in summer and autumn. Even in winter, you don’t have to do without a healthy snack. Traditionally, the late carrots, which are harvested shortly before the first snowfall, are stored in sandboxes, earth cellars, or cool rooms. The refrigerator is also suitable for storing carrots. Wrapped in paper, the carrots will keep for a week before they begin to shrivel. If you want to have some of the great turnips for a longer time, you can freeze it ready to cook. The consistency of the carrot changes, but the fresh taste is retained.

Tip: Our Gardender vegetable growing set also contains carrot seeds – as well as everything else you need to grow delicious home-grown carrots.