One of the most sought after vegetables on our table is carrots. Having planted it in the spring in our garden, by the fall we are waiting for a good and rich harvest. How disappointed we are when we dig up clumsy, cracked root crops. What is the reason? It turns out that growing carrots requires certain rules.
What is useful carrots
Everyone loves carrots. It is good, both boiled in soups, salads, and raw. The main and most useful component of the root crop are carotenoids. It is they who give the vegetable a beautiful Orange color. But their most important advantage is antioxidants, substances that help remove free radicals and toxins from our body, protect body cells from malignant degeneration. By the number of carotenoids, carrots are second only to bell peppers.
Beta-carotene (provitamin A) has a good effect on the condition of the skin and vision. It is a fat-soluble vitamin, so it is best absorbed when combined with fat. To get the most benefit from the vegetable, salads with raw carrots are best seasoned. vegetable oil or sour cream. Such a salad will bring more benefits to the body. And saute carrots for soups in a small amount of fat.
Carrots contain a lot of B vitamins, vitamins E, K, D, C, pantothenic acid, flavonoids, anthocyanidins, fatty, essential oils. Sugar in fruits contains quite a lot, from 3 to 15%, which gives a sweet taste. Carrots contain a lot of potassium, calcium, iron, manganese, iodine, magnesium, phosphorus and other trace elements.
Teach your children to chew on raw carrots. Children will receive not only a lot of vitamins and minerals, but also strengthen their gums and teeth.
How to grow a beautiful and rich carrot crop?
When growing carrots, pay attention to a number of factors that negatively affect a quality crop. Many, especially beginner gardeners, do not know what to do. For good harvest several rules must be followed.
- Regular watering . It is very important to water properly, especially after a drought. Water carrots regularly, avoid drying out the soil. With irregular watering, when after a drought you fill the soil with water or during prolonged rains, the roots begin to crack.
Excess moisture, and even with too thinned crops, contributes to increased fruit growth. But at the same time, the fruits coarsen, lose their suitability for eating. With a lack of moisture, carrots lose their juiciness.
- Sowing in a dark place . Carrots love open and sunny places. The darkening of the planting leads to a decrease in sugar content and the mass of the vegetable.
- The best soil – light loams and sandy loams. When grown in acidic soils, carrots lose their sweetness and grow ugly. Carrots do not like saline and acidic soil. In dense and clayey soil, carrots cannot grow normally, they acquire a disproportionate shape and an unpleasant taste.
- Dislikes fresh manure , root crops grow clumsy, ugly. It makes no sense to leave such carrots for storage until spring.
- fertilizers. If you fertilize carrots, then know that she does not like mineral fertilizers. It is better to use urea and organic matter (humus, infusion of cut grass).
- thinning necessary for the formation of a strong, beautiful root crop. Thin out seedlings carefully, otherwise the roots of neighboring seedlings may be damaged, causing them to branch and deform. The first thinning is done in the phase of three true leaves. Thin out during the day, preferably in sunny weather, so that onion fly did not infect carrots. In the evening, thinning is not recommended, the onion fly flies around the garden at this time. The second thinning is carried out 20-25 days after the first, seedlings are left at a distance of 2 cm, the third is carried out at a distance of 6 cm from one plant to another. In order not to bother with thinning, I buy granular seeds. When landing, you can immediately decompose them into the right distance from each other, then thinning is not necessary.
- Weed removal . Weeds are the scourge of our gardens. Various herbicides are now commercially available for weed control. But I would not recommend using them in the garden. It is best to remove weeds by hand. You can use folk methods by spraying the products with a spray gun before planting the seeds.
Carrots are very responsive to proper care. When growing it in your beds, do not forget these recommendations, then you will be provided with a good harvest.
Even experienced gardeners have incidents with carrots - either they didn’t sprout, or they disfigured them badly, or even the root crops turned out to be ugly and tasteless. Growing carrots is a delicate matter and, despite its apparent simplicity, is replete with many nuances. With this vegetable, a negative result can be evidence of both a lack of care and excessive diligence. We propose to consider what mistakes in the cultivation of crops are made most often and how to avoid them.
Carrots are delicate!
Site selection and garden preparation
The climatic conditions of Central Russia are ideal for growing carrots in open ground- it turns out dense, juicy, sweet. For crops choose open area garden, so that a lot of sun falls on it - in the shade, the plants stretch out, grow with large tops and small root crops. The earth needs loose, sandy loam is better, with a neutral reaction of the soil solution. Considering that ideal conditions are rare in nature, crop bed you can do it yourself. Clay soils are loosened and enriched - humus, compost, peat are added to them, leaf ground, river sand.
When deciding where to grow carrots, advanced gardeners create special organic beds, with an airy structure, very light. The soil is dug up before winter, acidity is reduced by liming, mineral fertilizers are applied: nitrogen (20–30 g/m²), superphosphate (40–50 g/m²), potassium salt (40–50 g/m²). With organic matter, you need to be more careful, because root crops cannot stand fresh manure. They are suitable for areas fertilized a year earlier - after cucumber, zucchini, potatoes, cabbage. Typical mistakes:
- Digging is carried out in the spring. This violates the structure, reduces natural humidity soil. Seeds, being at a depth of 2–3 cm, do not receive capillary moisture and significantly lose their germination capacity.
- They add a lot of nitrogen. Carrots overfed with nitrogen contain a lot of nitrates, taste worse, and are poorly stored.
It is important! No matter how hard you try, but on acidic soil (pH below 6-6.5) you will not be able to grow sweet carrots. An acidic environment prevents the absorption of valuable trace elements, including phosphorus and potassium. Given the characteristics of the culture, liming the soil can only be carried out in winter - before the autumn digging.
seed requirements
Efficient technologies for growing carrots are inconceivable without high-quality seed material. When choosing a variety or hybrid, pay attention to the ripening time, soil requirements, moisture, correlate this with the conditions of your region. Coated seeds do not need additional preparation, but they have a feature - watering the soil before and after sowing. It is necessary that the multi-layered shell be able to get wet, without this the seed will not receive the necessary nutrition and water, respectively, will not germinate. Encrusted and primed seeds are sown dry. But the usual ones need to be prepared for sowing - pre-soak, disinfect, stimulate with growth regulators. There are many procedures main function- accelerate the emergence of seedlings.
Typical mistakes:
- Sowing with dry untreated seeds. They sprout for a long time, and if they have sown in the cold ground, they can sprout.
- Dried seeds do not germinate. There is not enough moisture to dissolve the granule.
The subtleties of sowing
The secrets of growing carrots at this stage are in the correct determination of the timing and sowing technology. To get an early harvest for summer consumption, carrots are sown as soon as the soil is shaken and warmed up to 6–8⁰ C. When winter sowing the time of ripening can be accelerated by 1-2 weeks. In order to get high-quality and long-term root crops for laying for the winter, the sowing dates are shifted by about 1–1.5 months - by the first decade of June.
Sow carrots shallowly (1.5–2 cm), placing them in rows, 12–15 cm ribbons or wide ridges. The bottom of the seed furrow must be compacted, moistened, and only after that the seeds are laid out. From above they are covered with a dry substrate - earth from the garden, humus, mulch from rotted organic matter. Sowing methods for growing carrots recommend sparse or precise. They require extra cost and patience, but they will pay off handsomely at harvest time and save you time on thinning.
Typical mistakes:
- The furrows were cut, but not compacted, not watered. The seeds lay unevenly, rolled under clods of earth, did not receive the necessary moisture - seedlings are uneven, unfriendly. The tip of the root died from drying out - a forked root crop will grow.
From seeding to seedlings
The main thing in growing carrots from sowing to shoots is to save moisture. Beginning gardeners, seeing that seedlings do not appear, resort to watering. A crust forms on top of the soil, then it becomes covered with cracks, through which water evaporates intensively. How to deal with it? Firstly, if the principle of “dry on wet” is observed during sowing, then the top layer will reliably retain moisture. Secondly, when a crust appears, surface loosening is carried out with a rake. To make rows of carrots appear earlier, mix radishes, lettuce, spinach with seeds - they will act as beacons.
Typical mistakes:
- Watering until shoots. The achene does not have enough strength to break through the formed crust - shoots are weak, uneven, delayed.
plant care
The technology of growing carrots at the care stage includes such mandatory activities as weeding, loosening, thinning, watering and fertilizing. The thinning procedure is excluded if sparse or precision sowing was used. In this case, if there is a need, the density is adjusted during weeding.
thinning
The first thinning is carried out with the formation of 2-3 leaves. Weaker shoots are removed, leaving an interval of 2 cm between the remaining ones. The carrots are broken for the second time when the root crop grows up to 1.2–1.5 cm in diameter, leaving the plants after 4–6 cm. How to grow large and even carrots depends , including from the secrets of thinning.
- You need to pull out the excess carefully, without damaging the growing seedling nearby. A damaged root crop starts a new root at the site of injury, that is, it bifurcates.
- If you love large carrots, leave plants less often. To get aligned root crops, they must sit shoulder to shoulder in the ground.
- Carry out any weeding on soft soil - after rain or watering.
Note! During thinning, a spicy aroma rises above the bed, attracting carrot flies. To protect plantings from the pest, remove weeding waste in a timely manner, work early in the morning or in the evening.
Typical mistakes:
- Thickened crop. Instead of high-quality root crops, you will get “mouse tails”.
- Sparse sowing. Non-standard products, large specimens may give side shoots, outgrowths.
Watering
How to water carrots is the most controversial issue in crop cultivation technology. Supporters of traditional farming recommend doing this infrequently - 4-5 times per season, but plentifully. Water should wet the soil by 40 centimeters, which is 50-60 l / m². The first watering is carried out immediately after the shoots, then - approximately every 15-20 days. AT natural farming irrigation is not welcome. Seedlings need abundant moisture until 5-6 true leaves appear. After the first thinning, the beds are mulched with a layer of 5-7 cm and not watered at all or extremely rarely - in the case of a dry summer. There is an explanation for this - the roots of carrots (not to be confused with the root crop!) Reach 2–2.5 m and can provide themselves with the necessary moisture.
In any case, watering must be stopped completely at least a month before harvesting.
Note! How to grow large carrots, if there is no way without watering, but there is no water? Plant late-ripening varieties. In autumn it will rain, dew will fall, fogs will fall and the root crop will have time to catch up.
Typical mistakes:
- Frequent but shallow watering. The root crop, in order to receive moisture and nutrition from the upper layers of the soil, begins to grow lateral roots. As a result, "hairy" carrots grow.
- Uneven hydration. If after a long period of drought, give abundant watering, the probability of longitudinal cracking of root crops is high.
top dressing
Root feeding of carrots is necessary if the full rate of fertilizer was not applied before sowing. They are effective in combination with watering. They are timed to coincide with the end of the breakthrough, that is, 2-3 times per season. We need balanced fertilizers for root crops, such as Agricola, Bona Forte, Fertika (universal).
Typical mistakes:
- Lack of fertilizer. In depleted soil, the roots will be small, from a lack of potassium, the pulp becomes dense and hard, without phosphorus, it will not pick up sweetness.
Cleaning
The answer to the question of how to grow sweet carrots often depends on the nuances of harvesting. It is impossible to dig out early, because in the last month of the growing season, the vegetable is intensively gaining sugar. But it is even more dangerous to overexpose carrots in the garden. A root crop that has sat in the ground begins to grow young roots, becomes hard, and begins to taste bitter. To avoid such mistakes, when sowing, pay attention to the growing season of the variety and stick to them.
Typical mistakes:
- Early planting varieties with a short growing season. If the ripening dates came by the end of August, and the root crops were removed a month later, you will get woody, hairy from the roots and tasteless carrots.
Covered ground technologies
Being a plant with a long daylight hours, carrots are not the most popular indoor crop. Nevertheless, growing carrots in a greenhouse allows you to get additional crops of a vitamin vegetable out of season.
What nuances should be remembered?
- Early ripe varieties with a short growing season are suitable for sowing in greenhouse conditions, for example, Minicor (88–90 days), Saturno F1 (50–55), Amsterdam (80–85).
- If you sow carrots in February-March, the roots will ripen by May. The second time is planted no earlier than August and the vitamin harvest is taken during December-January.
- Until mid-February, while daylight hours last less than 10 hours, additional lighting with fluorescent lamps must be used.
Otherwise, care is not much different from open ground technologies. Although you should not count on high yields in a greenhouse, young vegetables with tender, crispy flesh diversify your table and eliminate the need for long-term storage.
Carrots in high beds:
Carrots are an unpretentious crop that requires minimal care. However, you need to take care of it properly. Learn how to prepare seeds for planting, how to grow carrots and not give them away to be eaten by pests.
Seed selection
Growing carrots begins with the selection of seeds. They are sold in different types: There are ordinary seed bags, granules and seeds glued on a tape. Many gardeners do not like to plant granules and ribbons because they have poor germination. So opt for traditional bagged seeds. Pay attention to colored seeds, they are treated with fungicide, do not require pre-sowing treatment. In addition, they are easier to place in the grooves without thickening the crops.
There are many varieties and hybrids of carrots. The most popular of them:
Nantes;
Losinoostrovskaya 13;
Shantenay 2461;
Vitamin 6;
Samson.
If you want to collect seeds in the future, then use only varietal carrots. Hybrids in the next generation lose their characteristics.
The soil
Loamy soil is most suitable for carrots.
On heavy clay soil, it will be difficult for her to sprout, so in such conditions it is better to make a bed-box. In the fall, the ground here needs to be dug up, and in the spring, add compost and humus.
sandy soil- too light, it will not retain the moisture needed by carrots. Therefore, here, too, it is necessary to raise the bed and fill it annually with soddy soil and compost.
Sunny places are taken under carrots, thick shade is avoided. It is good if onion or nightshade crops were grown on the plot allocated for planting last year. After umbrella carrots are not planted.
Acidic soils are limed in autumn - they add a glass of chalk, fluff lime or dolomite flour per square meter, then dig it up. Ash also helps to reduce acidity.
Fertilizers close up in the spring when preparing the soil. Use organic (except manure) and complex mineral fertilizers in recommended doses. From organic matter, humus (0.5 buckets / m²) and peat (1 bucket / m²) are suitable.
Seed preparation
Growing carrots is a simple matter, but there are secrets here too.
Nature, with the help of essential oils, protected its seeds from premature shoots. Open the bag of seeds and inhale the scent. The more intense it is, the more oils and the fresher the seeds. To make carrots rise faster, you just need to wash off the essential oils. To do this, the seeds are soaked in water or in a solution of potassium permanganate, in a solution of the drug "Epin" or even in vodka. Who is into what.
Pre-sowing seed preparation is different, and each gardener needs to empirically find the best way to grow carrots. Here are three tried and tested methods that you may find helpful.
First way
This is the easiest seed preparation option:
1. heat water to 50-60°C;
2. soak the seeds for 10-15 minutes, stir occasionally;
3. remove everything that has surfaced;
4. Drain the water, dry the seeds and sow.
In good weather, carrots will germinate in a maximum of 4 days.
Second way
This option will take a little longer:
1. soak the seeds in water or in "Epin" for two hours;
2. put them in a thick cotton bag;
3. bury a shovel on the bayonet in the ground for 1-2 weeks;
4. Dig up and mix a tablespoon of seeds with half a glass of sand and a few radish or lettuce seeds;
5. sow in the furrows in the garden.
After such underground confinement, the seeds will swell well or give roots. So you will increase germination, and in the near future you will thin out crops less. lettuce or radish grow faster than carrots, so you always know where the furrows are. This is convenient when you need to loosen the ground, and the seedlings are still too small.
Third way
Many gardeners are trying to fully optimize the cultivation of carrots in the open field. To do this, they independently make ribbons with proven seeds:
soak the seeds in a gauze bag for 2-3 days;
rinse regularly, then dry;
cook a paste from flour and water;
take toilet paper, unwind it to the required length;
apply drops of paste on the strip at a distance of 2 cm;
put a carrot seed in a drop of paste (several seeds are possible);
dry the strip for 10-15 minutes.
Then lay the tapes in wet furrows 2 cm deep, cover with earth and tamp. You can splash it again with water. The paper will naturally decompose and the seeds will germinate.
This is a laborious method, but it has advantages. You will have to thin out seedlings less. The paste will not allow the seeds to “scatter” around the garden, so if you wish, you can even calculate the amount of the crop.
Planting carrots: in spring or before winter?
Carrot cultivation usually begins in the spring. Seeds are sown from late April to early June - the timing depends on the variety and cultivation goals. In the southern regions, the season begins in March, the second sowing is carried out in June.
Planting carrots before winter helps to get a crop in most of Russia in mid-July. However, there are some disadvantages here: the seeds may freeze and not sprout; if the seeds have sprouted, then return spring frosts can destroy them.
If you have a desire to experiment, remember that seed consumption must be increased by 30, or even 50%. Prepare the bed in advance, make grooves and wait for frost. Sow seeds in frozen ground and cover with pre-prepared soil stored at positive temperatures.
The standard scheme for growing carrots: grooves with an interval of 20 cm. They are cut on elevated beds (especially in damp places) or on a flat surface. In the spring, before sowing, the grooves are well watered (in the autumn they are planted in dry ones), the seeds are laid out, covered with loose soil. To accelerate germination, crops are covered with spunbond, it retains moisture and prevents the formation of a soil crust. After the appearance of sprouts, the shelter is removed.
Care
When growing carrots, certain rules must be followed. This applies to most horticultural crops.
The surface of the earth must be loose so that water can freely flow to the roots. If you notice a hard crust on the bed, loosen it. Usually such a crust forms after watering.
The soil must be moist. Carrots will not grow if they "float" in the garden or languish with thirst, sitting in dry ground.
Carrots are not watered often, but deeply, so that the root crop grows exactly down, and does not look for moisture near the surface, does not curl or separate.
Regardless of how you planted carrots, its seedlings need to be thinned out. It's almost impossible to avoid it. Therefore, to obtain large root crops, leave a distance of 5 cm between them. If you need small carrots, the distance between seedlings is 2 cm. Usually they thin out like this: they simply pull out the weakest seedlings with their fingers. Some gardeners have adapted to cut out unwanted shoots with nail scissors.
If the carrot is planted in poor soil, it should be fed with a complex mineral fertilizer, it is good if it is a special top dressing for root crops. Carrots will accept 1-2 top dressings per season with gratitude.
Pests
Growing carrots in the open field often develops into a struggle for the integrity of the crop.
Carrot fly is a real disaster for gardeners. For many years, you can grow carrots and not know the troubles, but at one “not perfect” moment everything changes. The tops begin to curl up and dry out. And the larvae of this insect begin to eat through the pulp of the root crop.
In some cases, late sowing of carrots in mid-June or planting plants with a strong smell on a bed with carrots can help: onions, marigolds, cilantro, garlic.
However, the most effective way protect yourself from flies - mulch the garden bed. After planting, it must be covered with non-woven covering material. As soon as the seedlings grow up, you need to cover the ground with sawdust or shavings with a layer of 5 cm. Do not tighten with shelter! The main thing is to prevent the fly from getting to the ground, where it lays larvae. In the summer, top up the mulch if necessary, because the fly is active most of the season.
Collection and storage
Harvest in different regions happening in different time, but usually you need to have time to harvest the carrots before frost.
It is easy to determine the technical ripeness of carrots: the rosette of leaves turns from erect to sprawling. This transformation occurs at 90-130 days from germination, depending on the variety.
However, you can eat carrots earlier. Beam ripeness occurs at 50-65 days.
A week before digging dry beds, shed well so that the carrots go juicy for storage. If heavy rains are expected, dig up the carrots before they come, so you save the crop from possible rotting.
Proper cultivation of carrots is half the battle. The remaining half falls on the storage of the crop. Remember: if you don't have a cellar, don't plant too much. If it is, and it is cool and well ventilated, proceed as follows:
Trim the tops about 1-5mm from the top on each carrot;
wash and dry the root crops, do not keep them for a long time in the bright sun to maintain juiciness;
remove all thin roots so that the carrot does not start growing during storage (you can rub the root crop with a gloved hand);
lay the carrots vertically in boxes of dry sand.
Other ways to store carrots:
1. grate it and put it in the freezer;
2. store a bag of whole carrots on a shelf in the refrigerator;
3. put in a box on a glazed balcony;
4. store in dry sawdust in a plastic bucket on the balcony (a layer of sawdust - a layer of carrots).
Conclusion
To get a crop of carrots, you need to properly plant the seeds and thin out the seedlings once. Be sure to keep the soil moist and prevent the formation of a hard crust. Mulch the soil in time and save yourself from frequent loosening, watering and fighting carrot flies. And, most importantly, plant as much as you can process so that your work is not in vain.
In Russia there is no such garden where carrots are not planted. Some root crops work out well, juicy, smooth, sweet. Others look painful, crooked squiggles, bitter, cracked. What is the secret of this orange beauty? Maybe in the choice of seeds? Hardly.
How to grow carrots in the open field so that she will thank high yield? It turns out that she is still that capricious girl. And it needs a special approach. Just from the category of "dancing with a tambourine" and "what else do you need?".
soil for carrots
Carrot is a stubborn girl. Slightly that not on it or her, at once the nose turns back. In other words, it begins to grow at random. He releases a lot of tails, but there is no sense. That is, the soil should be as loose as possible. That's right, so that the foot drowns. Therefore, the bed is prepared in advance, in the fall.
They dig deep, one and a half bayonet. So that there was room for carrots to grow. Otherwise, it will start to dodge and spin.
She also loves to eat, hearty and dense. But during growth it is inconvenient to feed her. It is useless to pour from above, when will it still reach the root? It is also impossible to loosen the earth, there is a risk of damaging small roots. What to do? Apply fertilizer early.
In autumn, well-ripened humus is added, but more. Manure is not brought in. Only if he completely overdid it, and even then they abstain. The sand is poured, large, clean. Sawdust, shavings are not suitable. They strongly acidify the soil, and carrots do not like this passion. It is better to pour fluffy lime, dolomite flour, pour ash. Again, this is all - strictly before the winter digging.
Mineral fertilizers are added. Especially orange beauty respects potassium, phosphorus. But nitrogen does not like. At all. Root vegetables are huge, but not sweet. Only suitable for livestock feed.
And vice versa. If you plan to sow carrots in winter, then the garden bed is prepared in advance, in spring or in the middle of summer.
Is it possible to plant carrots before winter
So what? If the bed is well cultivated, then why not? Seeds begin to germinate already at a soil temperature of +5°C. Suddenly arrive at the site much later? In addition, an early carrot will not hurt anyone, especially on the table. Another plus: by the time the weeds begin to sprout, the beauty will grow a beautiful lush braid. Therefore, she is not in danger of being beaten.
Of course, such root crops are not suitable for long-term storage, you will have to lie for too long. But for early use - just right.
The principle of winter sowing is very simple. To do this, prepare a bed from the summer. Around October, furrows are cut according to the usual pattern. And prepare dry soil in buckets. They are put in the underground, cellar, barn. In a word, where the earth does not freeze into a lump and remains loose.
With the onset of persistent frosts, about -10 ° C, they come to the garden. Almost the entire layer of snow is removed from it, leaving about 1-1.5 cm. Carrot seeds are laid directly on the snow in the prepared grooves. Sprinkle with soil prepared in buckets. And the snow is thrown back on top.
All. Now in the spring, as soon as the bed warms up to about + 6 ° C, the carrot will start to grow. AT middle lane it's about mid-April. And the usual method involves only in the third decade to start sowing.
Thus, winter planting allows you to get a crop at least a month earlier.
Advice. Seeds must be absolutely dry! Wet will just kill frost. Dry will calmly endure the most severe winter, it would be more snow.
But not everyone runs the risk of planting carrots using the method described above. Most are used to sowing it the old fashioned way, in the spring. Well, let's figure out how to do it right.
Seed preparation. Carrot has one feature. Its seeds are very high in essential oils. Some kind of protective shell. It protects the seeds from the outside from the effects of negative factors. But here's the catch. The same essential oil greatly complicates the germination of seeds. Have you noticed how long carrots take to sprout?
To destroy this ethereal shell, gardeners use the most various methods. Here are the most common:
- Seeds are placed in a linen bag, pour it with hot clean water. Approximately at +50°C for three hours. At the same time, the water is changed to fresh water 4 times during this time.
- Before planting, the seeds are mixed with wet sand and, as it were, rubbed between the fingers. Strong enough.
- Seeds are soaked for 12 hours, then the water is completely drained. Place them in the refrigerator for 2 days. This makes the essential oil evaporate faster.
- A linen bag with dry seeds is added dropwise in any flower pot. Keep like this for about 10 days. During this time, the soil will draw out most of the ethereal shell.
All these methods speed up the germination of carrot seeds by about two times. That is, seedlings will have to wait only a week instead of the usual two.
We sow carrots
By the way, there are a lot of pelleted seeds on sale now. The piece is comfortable. Large balls are easy to sow. The shell contains the whole complex of minerals, so necessary for young sprouts. Some are even impregnated with a growth stimulant. The only disadvantage of such seeds is the presence of a large amount of moisture during germination. That is, the earth must be damp. You will have to shed it well. And in hot weather, you again need to water the furrows until the first loops appear.
But it is quite possible to get by with ordinary carrot seeds. In order to make it convenient to plant them, gardeners have come up with a lot of various ways. Let's check them each.
Paste. Cook the usual paste, medium density. Approximate amount is poured into it the right seeds and stir thoroughly. Then, a furrow is shed simply from a vessel with a thin spout. A teapot works well for this purpose.
The disadvantage of the method is that you still need to get the hang of pouring this mixture evenly over the entire length of the beds.
Sand. The seeds are mixed with clean, damp sand. The proportion is 1 to 1. And this mixture is already sown in the furrows, as usual. So the seeds fall less often.
Minus the method: older people no longer have young finger sensitivity. Therefore, it is easy to confuse sand with seeds. The uniformity of landings will still be violated.
Bubble. Any bottle with a screw cap. A hole is made in it with an awl, a little larger than a carrot seed. Pour raw materials inside. A sharp hand movement is made above the furrow - the seed flies out through the hole.
Disadvantage: the first time the seed may simply not fall into the hole. From the second time, three pieces will fly out at once. So go ahead, shake the bubble like crazy.
Paper. In their free time, they take the cheapest toilet paper. Seeds are glued to it with the help of a paste and a toothpick. Then, after drying, you just need to cut everything into strips. When planting, they are laid in furrows and sprinkled with earth.
Minus: an occupation for the very patient, because it is tedious, long and breaking the eyes.
Use whichever suits you. Perhaps you can turn disadvantages into advantages. Just use the classic principle: they spill the furrow very heavily before laying the seeds. And sprinkle with loose, always dry soil.
This will prevent the formation of a thick earthen crust on the surface, and the seedlings will freely break through.
Caring for carrots
She is, of course, a girl. But she needs care a little different than a young girl.
Loosening. After each watering or rain, it is necessary to loosen the top layer of soil to a depth of no more than 2-2.5 cm. It is necessary to break the crust so that it does not compact the ground around the root crop. You don't have to go deeper. But between the furrows you can frolic with a chopper or flat cutter from the heart. Thus, the pressure of the soil on the root crop will decrease and small feeding roots will remain intact.
Watering. Carrot loves to drink. A lot, rarely, but very regularly. Make a rule for yourself: once a week on the same day, thoroughly shed the soil in the plantings. You need to moisten to a depth of at least 20-22 cm.
If watered often and little by little, then the root crop will be short and shaggy. And the first mighty summer downpour will cause the strongest cracking of fruits.
If you don’t water at all (let’s not let it grow itself), then there is a great risk of getting woody and bitter dried bread instead of a crop. They don't look like carrots at all.
Top dressing. During the entire growing season, fertilizers are not applied! All top dressings must be added to the soil in advance. If carrots receive nutrition from the outside during growth, they will grow big. But there will be no taste. This is especially true of mineral fertilizers with a high nitrogen content.
Pests. In addition to people, the carrot fly loves to eat carrots. She especially respects young landings immediately after pulling. Remember how far the aroma of the tops spreads at the end of the procedure.
To avoid such a nuisance, some sources recommend alternating grooves with onion plantings. There will definitely be an effect. But very weak.
It's better to act like this:
- a day before the proposed tearing, prepare an infusion of onion peel
- on X-day, liquid is poured into a spray bottle
- draw a groove and quickly spray the plantings with infusion
It's not really worth pouring. Onion infusion is very smelly, you need quite a bit of it. Just to kill the carrot flavor. By the way, you can periodically spray carrots throughout the growing season. This will 100% secure plantings from carrot flies. The rest of the pests are quite indifferent to the orange beauty.
Harvest
When to start digging carrots? In principle, all information in great detail is always indicated on the packaging of seeds. Focus on it and you definitely can't go wrong.
What to do if the seeds were donated or you grew them yourself? Of course, you can pull out one root crop at a time and look at it for a long time. Is it time or still let him sit in the ground? How to guess?
It turns out that everything is simple. Carrots begin to be massively harvested when 4-6 lower leaves turn yellow and begin to dry out. If they are still green and cheerful, then let them grow for now.
By the way, try not to dig out part of the garden. Cut the foliage with scissors or pruners to the very root. But don't touch the flesh. After about 2 days, when the top of the root crop dries up, sprinkle it with soil with your head. And forget until spring.
As soon as the snow melts, feel free to take a pitchfork and dig out your experiment. Carrots in the cellar at this point are already showing clear signs of wilting. And the one that you left in the garden will be fresh, juicy and tasty.
Advice. Just do not forget to thoroughly compact the soil around the left root crops. Straight with your feet and tighter. Mice are also very fond of such carrots. And the trampled earth will prevent them from tasting the sweet pulp.
- If planting too often, be sure to thin out the carrots immediately after watering. So the root crops will be pulled out of the soil without damaging the nearby girlfriends.
- Store carrots in a well ventilated area. Thus, you will avoid the manifestation of many putrefactive and fungal diseases. You are not sure about the complete sterility of your soil?
- When digging up root crops, do not pull them by the tops. A long piece may break off and remain in the soil. Use pitchforks. They easily enter the most dense soil and the risk of damaging the fruits is minimal.
- Plant Varieties different terms maturation. Use the early ripe ones for daily cooking. This carrot does not lie well in the cellar. Mid-season ripen just in time for the harvest time for the winter. Late-ripening varieties store best. They ripen just in time for laying in cellars and basements.
- Carrots are not planted with seedlings. Experiments conducted by some gardeners have shown that such root crops always grow crooked and do not gain their characteristic mass. At the same time, precious time is spent on transplantation. And it is not enough in the spring.
How to grow carrots outdoors? Actually, it's not that easy. Size is not the main advantage of the orange beauty. It is much more important to get juicy and sweet root crops at a minimum cost. Take good care of the carrot, and it will not rust behind it.
Video: how to plant carrots
Anyone can grow long and even root crops on their site. The main thing in this matter is not to be lazy and do all the necessary agricultural work as needed. So, let's begin.
The first thing to do is find a suitable planting site and prepare the soil. The quality of carrots directly depends on the type of land. Therefore, for this, on the one hand, unpretentious vegetable, it is necessary to choose light in mechanical composition, fertile places where there is good drainage. In addition, the place where the bed will be located should be flat, as open as possible and well lit. Also at this stage, it should be borne in mind that the best predecessors for carrots are onions, cabbage, early potatoes, especially if they were brought under organic fertilizers. But the beds where celery (celery, cumin, dill, fennel) grew before that, and it is better not to use carrots in this case, since it is unlikely that you will be able to grow a good harvest. How to grow carrots if the plot is small and land rotation is difficult to carry out? Everything is quite simple: since the situation is almost hopeless, only a strong ashing of the soil remains: 0.2-0.3 kg of wood ash is dispersed on one square meter soil and dig. The operation is performed twice a year.
As for the preparation of the soil itself, this must be done in the fall, so that the land has time to settle before sowing. Previously, the place where the vegetable will grow is cleared of stones, after which they are carefully dug up, digging for a bayonet or even two, and form high bed. If necessary, fertilizing should be applied to poor soils - humus; in heavy soils - peat, sawdust and river sand; acidic lands are alkalized with chalk (lime). But in any case, fresh manure is not recommended to be applied, otherwise the root crops may grow ugly. Growing carrots in soil high level ground water without a significant rise in the height of the ridge will lead to the ugliness of the crop. 
In the spring, when the bed warms up, 7-10 days before planting, it is necessary to loosen the ground well and disinfect it with a solution blue vitriol, which is prepared in the calculation of 1 tbsp. spoon for 10 liters of water. Then the bed is watered with warm water, about 30 - 40 ° C, after which the planting site is covered with a film, preferably dark. The last action will allow the earth to warm up and retain moisture. Of course, the last steps are not necessary if the spring turned out to be hot, and in winter there were considerable snowdrifts. You can also ignore the film if the harvest is supposed to be late. And finally, you can refuse to warm up if you are sure of the quality of the seeds, and also that there will definitely not be a cold temperature or, even more so, frosts.
Sowing an orange root crop depends solely on how much moisture is contained in the ground, as well as on the climatic conditions in which it will be grown: if we are talking about central lane Russia or a climate similar to it, then the sowing date will be April 20-25. A little earlier (7-14 days) carrots are planted if the snow has already melted more than 21 days ago and relatively warm weather has set in without night frosts. A little later, carrots should be planted if the weather has not settled down, and at night negative values \u200b\u200bof the thermometer are observed. But do not delay the landing period - it would be optimal to land before May 5, provided total absence snow and frequent frosts. In the southern regions, carrots are planted in two stages - March 10-20 (for summer consumption) and June 10-15 (seed planting and for winter consumption).
Seeds worth processing warm water(rinse two to three times) and then cover in a damp cloth for swelling and passage of moisture to the seed through the crust containing a large number of hydrophobic essential oils. If this is not done, then there is a high probability of a delay in seedlings for a period of 2-3 weeks, which worsens the ripening of the root crop. Also, to accelerate seedlings, you can carry out the following procedures: 
- Bubbling. Carrot seeds are placed in a vessel with water, the temperature of which is above room temperature (optimally - 25g. C). Water is aerated by an air pump during the day, after which planting material removed and put into the refrigerator on the middle shelf, where it is stored for about 3-5 days. 12 hours before sowing, they are removed from the refrigerator and dried to flowability, after which they are planted in beds. Germination in this case will take 5-7 days.
- Burrowing into the soil. Dry planting material is placed in a linen bag and buried in a bed at the depth of a spade bayonet. Neither watering nor fertilizer is produced. After about 1.5-2 weeks, the bag is removed, its contents are dried on a dry cloth or parchment and planted in a garden bed. Germination will take approximately 4-5 days.
- nutrient solution. The seed is laid out on a fabric base, covered with a cloth on top, poured with a nutrient solution for 24 hours. Nutrient medium a mixture can come out boric acid, nitrophoska and water (ratio 1/3 tsp, 1/2 tsp and 1 liter of water, respectively); or potassium permanganate, dissolved in a liter of water until red, 1/2 teaspoon of fertilizer. After soaking, the seed is washed in warm water and put in the refrigerator for half a week. After being removed from the refrigerator, they are dried to flowability and planted in the ground.
Carrots are planted along the grooves made in the garden. Optimally done as follows: furrow width with matchbox, depth in its half, interval 200-240mm. The extreme furrows are located 120 mm from the edges of the beds. The width of the furrow should not exceed 900mm (respectively, the ridge should be 1.1m). Before planting, the bed is shed with a strong solution of potassium permanganate. Seeds are scattered with a snake in a furrow with a step of 10-15 mm, after which mulching is carried out with soil, peat or peat-sand mixture. The planted ridge is covered with a film with a ventilation gap of 120-150 mm. Shelter will not only improve the preservation of heat and moisture, but also prevent the appearance of a carrot fly - a pest that can destroy the crop. 
Landing Care
Growing a good crop requires mandatory care, but caring for a planted root crop is quite simple: it is enough to thin out the bed in time, loosen the soil as necessary, weed, feed and, of course, water.
Step 1 Thinning is carried out as the tops grow.
It is necessary to thin out the carrots at the first shoots; the smallest (and therefore the least viable) shoots are pulled out with an interval of 20-25 mm between root crops. The second thinning is carried out in June-July with an interval of 75-100 mm. The second thinning allows the extracted roots to be used for food or livestock feed. It may be necessary to defuse the carrots for the third time if the fruits obviously interfere with each other.
Step 2 It is important not to forget to feed the carrots
In the period from the appearance of the fifth or sixth leaves + 2-3 days, mineral fertilizers are applied. After feeding, the first hilling can be done, which is repeated after the first thinning, after the second thinning and then every 2-4 weeks. Hilling helps to cover the fruit in the ground, avoid sunburn and greening of the shoulders. Also, when growing, you can adhere to the three-phase method: 5,7,10 leaves. But it should be borne in mind that in any case, the fruits should be underground at a depth of about 50mm. 
Step 3 Watering carrots
Watering carrots should be intensive enough to prevent drying of the soil, but not excessive to prevent its hypothermia. The best thing is uniform watering, because with a lack of water, the roots become coarse and “wooden, with an excess - small and tasteless. It is best to adhere to the following watering tactics:
Harvest and storage
Harvesting takes place in late September - early October. The root crop is pulled out of the ground by the tops, after which it is placed on the ground nearby to quickly remove excess moisture from its surface. If loosening and weeding during the growing period were not done regularly and the soil hardened, it is possible to dig in with a garden bracket. But this must be done in such a way as not to damage the fetus.
If the harvest is in rainy weather, then the collected carrot is laid out in a dry room. The total drying time is about 1-1.5 hours (i.e. until the surface is visible dry). 
After drying, it is necessary to trim the tops. It is most convenient to do this with a knife or garden pruner if the tops are powerful and thick. The greens are cut off at the root, without damaging the root crop. At the same time, the crop is sorted: all damaged, rotten, crooked fruits are discarded. Smooth, undamaged carrots are placed in a ventilated box and stored in a cool, dark place.