Many summer residents deny themselves the pleasure of growing carrots, all because the vegetable requires care and maintenance.
Forgotten to thin out the planting and ugly pods instead of juicy root crops. However, experienced gardeners know how to plant carrots without thinning.
Dates of planting carrots
It is quite possible to grow carrots without thinning, but for a start it is important to determine the timing of sowing and choose seeds.
Early ripe varieties of carrots are intended for summer consumption and are practically not stored. They are planted in the winter or in the second half of April. Among the early varieties, the most popular are:
• Paris Carotel. Carrots give good harvests even on heavy and poorly cultivated soil.
• Amsterdam. Juicy root crops with a small core.
• Nantes. Carrots are suitable for processing and fresh consumption.
Mid-season carrots are suitable for short-term storage and processing. They begin landing in the first half of May.
• Samson. High yielding variety. Root vegetables of bright orange color with dense and juicy pulp.
• Flacca. Harvest variety, grows well even on heavy soils. Carrots are resistant to diseases and pests.
• Forto Harvest variety, well stored, rarely affected by pests.
Late carrots are well stored and suitable for winter consumption. Landing is carried out from the beginning to mid-June. Harvest late varieties in mid-October. Popular varieties with good root crops:
• Queen of the Autumn. Carrots do not shoot, do not crack when ripe.
• Sweet winter. The presentation of root crops is preserved until the next season.
• Olympus. Crop grade for weak soil.
• Red giant. Suitable for winter sowing.
The timing of planting carrots may be somewhat shifted, always focusing on the local climate and weather.
How to prepare carrot seeds for planting
Every gardener knows that carrots sprout tight. This is due to the fact that root crops are saturated with essential oils, which make germination difficult.
You can speed up the process of emergence of friendly shoots. Here the main task of the gardener is to wash off the ethers from the seeds.
1. Seeds are placed in a tissue bag and tied tightly.
2. Warm water is collected in a glass, the temperature of which is 45-50C.
3. A bag of seeds is lowered into a glass and kept until the water cools completely.
4. The colored water is drained.
The procedure is done twice, after which the bag is opened and the seeds are dried to a loose state. Now the planting material is ready.
Important! After processing, the seeds germinate twice as fast as usual.
How to plant carrots without thinning (photo)
If there is no time and desire to constantly mess around in the beds with carrots, use the proven methods from experienced gardeners. You do not need to buy expensive granular seeds and special tools for this. Everything you need for planting without thinning is found in every home.
Tape Landing
You can make a tape for planting carrots yourself, which saves time for thinning and money to buy a finished one. To do this, you need ordinary toilet paper and a starch and water paste.
1. The paper is cut into strips 2 cm thick. The length of the strips is equal to the length of the beds.
2. The droplets of the paste are distributed at a distance of 2.5-3 cm from each other.
3. Seeds are laid on a paste and allowed to dry.
The advantage of this method is that you can prepare the tape in advance at home in the winter. It is easy to store tapes until planting, just twist them into a roll. The name of the variety is applied to each roll. Seedlings are obtained amicably, because all seeds are at the same depth. Thinning seedlings is not necessary, they are distributed at an optimal distance.
Ready strips are simply laid out in pre-prepared beds and sprinkled with earth. This method of planting gives large yields.
Advice! To increase the yield of carrots, mineral fertilizers are added to the paste.
Syringe as a planter for carrots
A ready-made planter for carrots is a plastic container with a dispenser at the bottom of it. When pressure is applied to the piston, the seeds through the dispenser fall into the soil. For this purpose, you can use an ordinary medical syringe.
Seeds are poured into the flask and placed at the same distance on the bed. To seedlings turned out uniform, try to adhere to the same depth of seed placement.
Sowing carrots with egg trays
Paper trays from eggs are useful for sowing carrots to distribute seeds at the same distance from each other. This method allows you to grow carrots without thinning.
1. Prepare and level the bed in advance.
2. Two paper trays are placed one into the other to get a sturdy construction.
3. Press the convex side of the trays to the ground so that holes remain.
4. Distribute carrot seeds into prepared wells.
Preparation of beds before planting carrots
Whichever way you plant carrots, the garden bed must be prepared before sowing.
Since the autumn, they have been digging up and planting rotted manure, potassium salt and superphosphate. You should not use lime, ash and a lot of nitrogen fertilizers, carrots do not like this.
If in the fall they were late with the preparation of beds, then it does not matter. In the spring, the soil is dug up two weeks before planting so that the bed settles. Carrots love dense land.
A good harvest can be achieved by growing carrots in a wide-row way. A bed is formed with a width of about 15-20 cm, along the edges of which a bow is planted. This will prevent the appearance of a carrot fly. Carrots are planted inside the rut in any of the ways described above.
As the root crops grow, the bed is mulched with mowed grass or sprinkled with earth. This will prevent the green tips from forming at the edges of the carrots.
Outdoor carrot care
To get a good crop of carrots, it is important to observe only a few points:
• timely loosening of the soil;
• lack of weeds;
• regular watering.
Mulching the beds will help to facilitate the work, then there is no need to constantly loosen the soil and remove weeds. Mulch inhibits the growth of weeds, the soil beneath it remains moist and loose.
But watering carrots should be taken seriously. The first reason for sluggish and bitter root crops is improper watering.
The bed should be saturated with moisture to a depth of 30 cm. For this, it is better to use drip irrigation. Since a lack or excess of moisture affects the taste of root crops, leads to cracking and excessive growth of tops.
Water the carrots once a week. In this case, after sowing in 1 square. m. beds consume only 3 liters of water. After shoots appear, and the tops grow, the rate is increased to 10 liters per 1 square. m. When the tops close, the formation of root crops occurs, here the water consumption is up to 20 liters per unit area.
1.5 months before harvesting, the amount of water is reduced to 10 liters, and a week or two before harvesting, they completely stop watering the garden.
If the landing site was prepared in accordance with all the rules and all fertilizers were applied, then carrots do not need to be additionally fed. There is a need to feed root crops when they forgot about fertilizers before planting. Soluble mineral complexes are used, which are introduced in two stages. The first time a month after germination, the second - after 1.5 from the previous one.
