How to plant carrots correctly

Many novice gardeners and summer residents are greatly mistaken in the fact that growing carrots is easy. Imagine their surprise when part of the crops do not sprout at all, and what has grown is a small and inconspicuous carrot, which is embarrassing even to show to the neighbors. But not only beginners have problems - not every gardener with experience is able to reap a wonderful harvest. In this article, you will learn how to grow carrots so that they are not only large and long, but also sweet!

Secrets of growing carrots in open ground

Carrots, like any other crop, have their own maintenance and cultivation requirements that are worth remembering. The most important thing is that carrots love light very much and, on the contrary, cannot tolerate even the slightest shadow. It remains resilient and continues to grow even during periods of drought, but good, abundant watering will only be a plus for it. In addition, carrots hold up reliably even at low temperatures and frosts, something that not every crop can boast of.

Good soil is one of the main factors for a good and high-quality harvest. The soil is usually light, with good drainage and always fertile. Also, it is worth paying attention to the depth of the arable layer, and the soil itself should be slightly acidic.

Since we are talking about the arable layer, it is called that not because it was dug well and deeply with a shovel or pitchfork, but because of its garden helpers - worms, green manure and weeds, other crops and organisms. These natural “hard workers” structure the soil so diligently and meticulously that no shovel or plow can compare with them. So, keep this in mind when choosing a garden bed.

By itself, carrots are not very demanding on what crop grew in the garden before it, however, the most desirable predecessors include tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, legumes, and without exception, garlic, etc. There is no point in listing everything.
But you can plant carrots so that they are long and large in the same bed, no more three years contract.

Preparing the soil for planting carrots in open ground

Land for planting is usually prepared in the fall, much less often in the spring. The preparation process consists of removing stones from the soil, thoroughly digging up the bed, and, if necessary, fertilizing with manure or compost in a proportion of 10 liters per m2. If your soil is too heavy, then you should definitely add sand (sifted), peat and sawdust. If the soil is too acidic, then it should be dug up with chalk.

With the arrival of spring, a week or a little more before planting the seeds in open ground, the bed should first be leveled with a rake and all clods broken up. Next, the soil needs to be watered (preferably with warm water, but if this is not possible, then ordinary water will do) and covered with film to retain moisture and heat.

Preparing carrot seeds for planting

So, the ridge is prepared and waiting in the wings, but you can’t just sow the seeds, they need to be prepared. As is known, carrot seeds do not have very high germination rates in open ground: from 50 to 75 percent, but these figures only fall over time. Therefore, for sowing, it is recommended to take the freshest seeds possible and avoid those that are already more than 2-3 years old.

The first shoots usually appear only after 2-3 weeks from the moment of planting, and this process proceeds unevenly, i.e. Some seeds germinate earlier, others much later. This is due to the shell that covers the seeds. It is she who does not allow the sprouts to hatch. Over time, the shell is washed off with water and only then the whole process starts. To avoid this, the seeds need to be prepared, and for this, you can use one of the methods below.

Soak. One of the most proven and known methods. The seeds are wrapped in a cloth and placed in warm water for 24 hours. It is important to constantly maintain the water temperature (30-35 degrees), so change it as it cools - every 2-3 hours. Greater efficiency can be achieved by mixing ash with water. A day after soaking, the seeds must be removed and washed under clean water. Sometimes, some gardeners, before soaking the seeds, harden them by placing them in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Heat treatment. Everything is simple here. The seeds are also wrapped in a cloth and placed in water, only this time the temperature should be higher - 50-60 degrees. They must be kept in such water for 20-30 minutes, after which they must be taken out and placed in cold water for 2-3 minutes.
Bubbling. This is a procedure for treating seeds in water that is saturated with oxygen. It is considered one of the most effective methods.

Burying. One more no less effective method. Seeds wrapped in cloth must be buried in unheated soil to the full depth of the bayonet. They should be kept underground for no more than two weeks. Thanks to this treatment, the seeds produce the first sprouts already on the fifth day. Additionally, you can mix the seeds with peat and put them somewhere in a warm place for a week, then sow.
Once you decide on the processing method and carry it out, you can start planting the seeds. Just before you start, spread all the seeds at home on any surface and let them dry, this will make it easier to sow.

Sowing seeds in open ground

Depending on the variety and ripening time, carrots are planted in open ground:

In spring - most often this happens in the last week of April or the first days of May.
In winter - for this purpose, choose the time when the ground is already a little frozen: the last days of October or the beginning of November.

Due to their small seeds, many gardeners end up with uneven planting - some more, some less. To avoid this, you can use one little trick. For one glass of sand take 1 tsp. seeds and all this is mixed well, after which it is sown on the site.
To make carrot beds long and large, it is better to make them narrow, about 4 rows long, this will be much more convenient.

If nothing else will be grown on the plot besides carrots, then there is a method. In the spring, in a previously prepared area, it is necessary to cut grooves with a distance of 15-20 cm between them. Then, they should be thoroughly watered and sprinkled with a thin layer of ash. When everything is done, you can sow the seeds.

The depth of seed placement depends on the planting season and their condition. If you plan to plant in the spring, then a depth of no more than 5 cm will be sufficient. After planting, the rows are covered with earth, and a layer of compost is poured on top. Then, the entire bed is covered with film, but so that it is above the ground and not lying on it.
If planting is carried out in winter, then the depth of the rows should be no more than 2-3 cm, but the layer of compost should be at least 5 cm. It will also be a plus if in winter the bed is covered with a large layer of snow, but this depends on nature and your region, because not everywhere there are winters with snow, even with a small amount of it.

How to properly care for carrots in open ground

Like any other crop, carrots require proper care, with which you will be able to get good harvest.

Temperature conditions
The first shoots begin to appear already at a temperature of 3 degrees. The most acceptable temperature is considered to be 23-28 degrees Celsius, when the most correct development of the crop is ensured.
If we talk about frost resistance, then at minus 6, young seedlings die, but minus 3-4 degrees are tolerated quite calmly.

Watering
Basically, watering depends on the ripening period of carrots, usually once a week.
Young shoots are watered at the rate of 3-5 liters per 1 square meter. More adults - 10 liters per sq.m. At the ripening stage - 20 liters. Do not forget that the closer the harvesting date, the less often you need to water the carrots. A couple of months before harvest, water the carrots once every 10 days, and when 3 weeks remain, stop it altogether. And also, avoid waterlogging the soil - this can lead to rotting of the fruits.

Weeding
It is also necessary to ensure that weeds do not appear, because they inhibit the growth of carrots. To combat them, weeding must be done every 10-15 days. Also, it is advisable to do “cleaning” every time it rains, and the bed itself should be periodically loosened.

Top dressing
As soon as the first shoots appear, you can fertilize. As fertilizer, use chicken or cow dung, you can also use ash or compost. Fertilizers are diluted in water in a ratio of 1:10.

Don’t forget that over time, the rows need to be thinned out, especially in those places where a lot of seeds have grown nearby. The first thinning is done two weeks after germination, and the second after 20 days. The gap between shoots is 3-5 cm, no more.
I advise you to watch how they grow carrots on their plots in open ground in the video below.

How to get a good carrot harvest at home

As a matter of fact, in order to grow and obtain a suitable harvest, you must follow several rules:

A bed for carrots is selected with good lighting.
Avoid hard and clayey soil.
If carrots are grown in an acidic environment, there will be no sweetness in them.
From excess moisture, the fruits begin to rot, and from prolonged drought they become very hard.
Try not to touch the roots when you weed and never apply fresh fertilizer.

Carrots are a biennial plant from the celery family. At first growing season carrots form a leaf rosette and a root vegetable. Exist . Their shape can be either conical, cylindrical or round.

If you plant a carrot root the second year, the plant will form a rosette of leaves and then send out flower stems ending in an umbrella-shaped inflorescence.

Growing carrots in open ground is a simple task that even novice vegetable growers can do. Subject to compliance with agricultural techniques and good care This root vegetable will definitely please you with a good harvest.

Site selection and soil preparation

Carrots are very demanding on soil; the best harvest can be obtained on light soils with a neutral reaction. Heavy soils will also work, they just need to be worked well to a depth of about 35 cm or choose a ridge growing method.

If groundwater is close to the site, then it is best to make the beds for carrots raised to a height of about 30 cm. It is best to prepare the planting site in the fall: dig up the soil and add manure or humus.

Light areas are best suited for growing carrots; if shaded, the yield will noticeably decrease.

Note: for heavy clay soils It is best to use short-rooted varieties, such as Karotel or Chantane.

Sowing

Carrots are a cold-resistant plant; its seedlings tolerate frost well. Therefore, you can start sowing it immediately after the snow melts, which will allow you to get the first harvest in June. Perfect for such early spring sowing early ripening varieties. To further reduce the ripening time, you can sow before winter or try to master growing early carrots in the greenhouse.

When growing carrots intended for long-term storage, it is necessary to plant varieties of medium and late dates ripening, they are sown from the end of April until the beginning of June.

Note: The carrot harvest obtained as a result of winter and early spring sowing is not suitable for storage.

When growing carrots in the country, in most cases row sowing is used, and on an industrial scale when using drip irrigation, practiced in ribbon-line or on combs.

The seeds are sown directly into the soil in furrows, the distance between which should be about 20cm. After sowing is completed, they are covered with earth and thoroughly watered. (Read about how to prepare carrot seeds for planting.)

Unlike others garden crops Carrots cannot be grown from seedlings; if their taproot is damaged, the root crops grow branched and gnarled.

Take note: for supporting optimal humidity To speed up germination, you can stretch a film or agrofibre over the bed.

Care

After the emergence of seedlings, it is very important to thin them out in a timely manner. It is usually started after the appearance of two true leaves; the distance between the remaining plants should be about 2 cm.

Novice gardeners very often neglect thinning; as a result, they end up with a harvest of small and intertwined root crops.

Watering

When watering carrot beds, it is very important to follow the following rules:

Watering must be plentiful, in dry weather until the first true leaves form, approximately 2 times a week.
During the period when root crops begin to grow, watering must be reduced to 1 time per week, the soil must be well soaked to a depth of 20 cm.
From about mid-August, when the carrots begin to fill up, watering is stopped, except when a drought begins.

In arid and hot areas, vegetable growers practice growing carrots under straw. With this method, row spacing with grown carrots is filled with straw or any other mulching material, which avoids overheating of root crops and reduces the number of waterings to a minimum.

Note: After watering, a crust should not be allowed to form on the surface of the soil; in this case, the root crops will experience oxygen starvation and develop worse. To prevent this, after watering it is necessary to loosen the soil surface, while at the same time removing growing weeds.

Top dressing

Carrots are not very demanding on soil fertility, but to obtain a high yield, it is recommended to fertilize them. It is recommended to carry out the first fertilizing a month after germination. To do this, you can use the following mixture composed of:

It is in vain that some gardeners believe that grow carrots on summer cottage is a simple matter. Despite the simple and accessible agricultural technology of this root crop, in order to get a decent harvest, you have to work hard.
Any gardener can grow long and even root crops. Just don't be lazy. Follow necessary work for caring for carrots, and get a good harvest.

How to grow carrots in your garden

The first step is selection suitable place for planting and soil preparation. The type of soil directly affects the quality of carrots. This unpretentious vegetable is planted on light-textured, fertile soils with good drainage. In addition, it is necessary to choose a level, maximally open and well-lit place for the beds. It is best to plant carrots in places where onions, cabbage, and early potatoes were previously planted, especially if the soil was fertilized with organic fertilizers.

And in places where there were previously beds of celery (celery, cumin, dill, fennel), as well as carrots, it is better not to plant carrots, since you will not get a good harvest. In small areas with complex rotation, you can grow carrots. Do not consider this situation hopeless - heavily alkalize the soil: take wood ash in an amount of 0.2-0.3 kg, and scatter it over one square meter of soil. Then dig again. Do this twice during the year.

The soil itself is prepared in the fall so that the soil is stable before sowing. Clear the places where you plan to plant vegetables from stones, carefully dig them up (by one or two bayonets), forming high beds.

If necessary, feed poor soil with humus, heavy soil with peat, sawdust and river sand, add chalk or lime to acidic soil. Application of fresh manure is not recommended to avoid producing malformed roots. If carrots are grown in soils with high level groundwater, without raising the height of the beds, it can grow ugly.

In the spring, the beds warm up, and 7-10 days before planting carrots, thoroughly loosen the soil and disinfect it with a solution copper sulfate, prepared at the rate of 1 table. spoon for 10 liters of water. Then water the beds warm water(about 40 degrees), and cover the planting site with dark plastic film. Thanks to these last steps, the earth will warm up and retain moisture. In hot spring and snowy winter, and also if you are waiting for a late harvest, this is not necessary. If you are fully confident that the carrot seeds are of high quality and frost is not expected, you can refuse to warm them up.

Sowing carrots depends on the amount of moisture in the ground and the climatic conditions in which it is grown: in central Russia, sowing is carried out between April 20 and April 25. A little earlier (one to two weeks), root crops are planted when three weeks have passed since the snow melted, after relatively warm weather has established, excluding night frosts.

Carrots are planted even later if frost persists at night. But don’t delay the landing - optimal time- no later than May 5. Southern regions can plant root crops in two stages: for summer use - March 10-20, for obtaining seeds and winter use - June 10-15.

In order for the seeds to swell and moisture to pass through the crust, which contains a sufficient amount of hydrophobic essential oils, they are rinsed two to three times with warm water and then covered with a dampened cloth. If you ignore this, most likely, seedlings will be delayed by 2-3 weeks, and the ripening of root crops will worsen.

To speed up germination, the following procedures are necessary:

Bubbling

Place carrot seeds in a vessel in which the water has a temperature of approximately 25 degrees. During the day, the water is aerated with an air pump, and then the seeds are stored in the refrigerator on the middle shelf for about 5 days. Before sowing (12 hours before), the seeds are taken out of the refrigerator and dried well. Then they are planted in the beds. They will germinate within 5-7 days.

Digging into the soil

Dry seeds are placed in a bag made of natural fabric and buried in the beds (depth - the bayonet of a shovel). They are not watered or fertilized. After a couple of weeks, the bag is removed and the seeds are dried on a dry cloth or parchment. Then they are planted in beds. They will germinate in 4-5 days.

Using the Nutrient Solution

The seeds are laid out on a cloth and a linen is placed on top. All this is filled with a nutrient solution for a day. The nutrient medium may be different:

Mixable boric acid, nitrophoska and water in the ratio: 1/3 teaspoon: 1/2 teaspoon: 1 liter.
In a liter of water, potassium permanganate is mixed with water until a red solution is obtained, and ½ teaspoon of fertilizer is added.

After soaking, you need to rinse the seeds with warm water and put them in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. Before planting, they are dried until they flow. Then they are planted in the ground.

Carrots are planted in grooves that have been previously made in the beds. The optimal planting is as follows: a furrow the width of a matchbox, half its depth, distance 200-240 mm.

The outermost furrow should be positioned 120 mm from the edge of the bed. The furrow should have a width not exceeding 900 mm, and the ridge should not exceed 1.1 meters. Before planting the seeds, water the bed with a strong solution of potassium permanganate. Scatter the seeds in a snake pattern (step – 10-15 mm). Then mulch using soil, peat or peat-sand mixture. Cover the planting with film, leaving a ventilation gap (120-150 mm). Thanks to covering with film, heat and moisture are better retained, and the film also prevents the appearance of a pest (carrot fly) that can destroy the crop.

Procedure for caring for planted carrots

In order to grow a good harvest of carrots, proper care is required, which will not be special labor. This includes timely thinning of the beds, loosening the soil, weeding, fertilizing and watering root crops.

Getting a rich carrot harvest at your summer cottage.

Thin carrots as the tops grow

As soon as the first shoots appear, the smallest shoots are pulled out, maintaining an interval of 20-25 mm between root crops. Thin out the second time in June or July, maintaining an interval of 75-100 mm. During the second thinning, the carrots removed from the ground are suitable for food for people and animals. You can thin out three times if the root crops interfere with each other’s growth.

Feed the carrots

When the fifth or sixth leaves appear, after 2-3 days it is necessary to apply mineral fertilizers. After feeding the plant, hill up for the first time, repeating it after each thinning, and then once every 2-4 weeks. Thanks to hilling, the fruits are hidden in the ground and do not suffer from sunburn and greening of the shoulders.
When growing carrots, some gardeners use a three-phase method: 5, 7, 10 leaves. In all cases, the required soil depth for root crops is approximately 50 mm.

How to water carrots

Carrots need to be watered intensively so that the soil does not dry out, but not excessively so that it does not become overcooled. It is optimal to adhere to uniform watering: if there is not enough water, the carrots will be rough, and if there is too much, they will be small and tasteless. Follow the following pattern when watering:

From the appearance of the first shoots until the formation of root crops, regular watering is necessary: once every 3-4 days. At the same time, per 1 sq. 3-4 liters of water are poured per meter.
When carrots appear and until the end of summer: once a week (10-20 liters of water). The amount of water depends on the weather. If the weather is dry, there is more water. When precipitation continues for 5 days, watering is carried out 5 days after its end.
From the end of August: once every 1.5-2 weeks (8-10 liters of water per 1 square meter).
Two weeks before harvesting, stop watering root crops.

How to properly harvest and store crops

Harvest time is late September - early October. Root crops are removed from the ground by the tops and placed side by side on the ground to remove excess moisture from their surface.

If, while growing carrots, you loosened the soil and weeded the beds irregularly, the soil may harden. Then you will have to extract the root crops by digging them up with a garden staple. This is done very carefully to avoid damage to the carrot fruit.

When harvested in the rain, the carrots are then laid out in a dry place. Drying can continue for 1-1.5 hours until the surface is completely dry.

Then the tops are cut using a garden knife or pruning shears. It is cut off at the root, trying not to damage the root crop itself. At the same time, the crop is sorted: damaged, rotten and crooked fruits are discarded. The rest of the carrots are stored in a ventilated box in a cool and dark place.

Carrots are a rather finicky vegetable that can respond to unaccounted nuances in the growing process with a strange-looking harvest and a disappointingly low yield. Caring for carrots in open ground implies a strict sequence at each point of successive stages of root development, and missing one of the points means jeopardizing all the work expended. How to care for carrots correctly?

How to grow carrots correctly? High yields begin with preparing the soil for planting, and initial preparations need to be made in the fall. A flat place is selected in the garden bed, sufficiently illuminated by the sun for daylight hours and, preferably, previously used for planting cucumbers, white cabbage or grain crops. Depending on what kind of soil carrots like, namely neutral or slightly acidic, the alkaline balance of the soil is regulated.

First, you need to assess whether the soil is suitable for carrots for this indicator. The easiest way is to collect a pinch of soil from the desired area on a piece of clean glass and pour it with table vinegar. Alkaline and slightly acidic environments will react with strong or moderate foam (as when extinguishing soda), while an acidic environment will not show any changes.

You can also pay attention to the area being clogged with grass:

neutral soils are rich in lush, long vegetation: stinging nettle, quinoa, clover;
acidic soils in which to grow sweet carrots impossible, they will abound in mint, horsetail, violet and buttercup;
on soil with weak acidity you will find burdock, alfalfa, small pharmaceutical chamomile and sow thistle;
alkaline environment, the poorest and just as unsuitable for growing carrots in open ground as acidic, it is characterized by: poppy, sweet clover, bindweed.

The second task in the question of how to grow a good carrot crop is to create conditions for saturating the soil with oxygen. This is required so that the carrots have a sweet taste and grow slenderly in length, and do not go horned and squirm in all directions, bumping into the hardness of unloosened earth. Gnarled carrots occur when the vegetable begins to send out branches in search of a convenient direction and softer soil, and not sweet ones - due to lack of air.

Light fluffy soil that is not clogged with clay can be worked with a garden rake, but hard, compacted layers must be completely broken up by deep digging.

How to grow carrots in even rows and evenly distributed along the furrow? In order to get a good harvest, vegetables should not sit tightly together, which means there should be a distance between the seeds that is convenient for thinning later. There are many such convenient methods in agricultural technology:

with a mixture of flour and water, the seeds are glued to a strip of paper towel or napkin at a distance of 2-3 cm from each other, then these tapes are placed directly into the grooves after pre-planting watering;
combine the contents of a bag of seeds with 1 glass of clean sand, mix everything and introduce this mass in a thin stream into the dug groove;
Boil two tablespoons of starch in a liter of water and pour this lukewarm substance, with seeds added to it, into the prepared grooves;
Most gardeners, when planting this crop, traditionally plant the seeds in the soil at a distance of about 4 cm and a gap between rows of 15 cm.

What to do immediately after landing? The bed is covered with polyethylene, which is held until the first shoots appear. The vegetable tolerates low temperatures and even soil frosts quite tolerantly, but prolonged cold is the reason why carrots go to the shoot to the detriment of root development.

Watering carrots

Carrots in open ground do not require as much regular as even watering - the plant does not care how often the soil is moistened, but the moisture level must be constant and unchanged. Deviation from the level of water saturation in the soil that is comfortable for the root crop leads to pathologies of root formation:

superficial and slight moisture of the soil leads to the formation of a woody rhizome - the pale core of such a vegetable tastes bitter, and the carrot itself sometimes grows into bulky, shapeless tangles;
When growing carrots, it is also dangerous to oversaturate the soil with watering - there is a risk of getting nondescript, twisted monsters with branched tops.

One of the signs of improper and uneven watering is a horned carrot that has two or more root forks. To avoid mistakes of this kind, it is better to water root crops, adhering to the approximate scheme:

when the first shoots appear, 7-8 waterings are carried out throughout the month, 6 liters of water per 1 m2 of plot;
in the first month of summer the norm increases to 11-12 liters, multiplied by 5-6 waterings;
in July there should be only about five waterings, but 13-15 liters per meter of area;
the onset of August entails a reduction in water consumption and labor costs - carrots are growing already on two waterings of 6 liters of water each.

14-20 days before the day scheduled for harvesting, watering is stopped. Then the soil is moistened once to make the digging process easier.

Weeding and thinning carrots

Growing carrots in open ground should be accompanied by repeated weeding, especially in the period before germination, when weeds with powerful rhizomes may not allow the vegetable crop to sprout. Weeds should not be allowed to grow too tall - late weeding is one of the reasons why gardeners subsequently miss out on useful crops, because along with the grass, young tops of the ungrown vegetable also end up in the general heap.

How to get high yields with regular weeding? There are two theories equally substantiated by the experience of gardeners on how to weed vegetables:

after watering or rain - thus, the weeds are easily pulled out with the entire root system;
before watering, when the ground is dry, the thin roots of the grass in this case remain in the soil and dry out, which prevents the germination of new weeds.

Another mandatory procedure, without which growing and caring for this crop in open ground is impossible, is proper thinning of plants in the garden. When seeds are initially planted at the same distance from each other of 2-3 cm, thinning is a rather corrective procedure and not always mandatory.

Continuous sowing by any of the methods, when the seeds went into the furrow chaotically, in the long term always means one or two stages of breaking through the excess growth. Should I do this? Necessarily. The first thinning is carried out immediately, as soon as individual bushes of tops can be distinguished from the hatching greenery.

Often the answer to the question: why do carrots grow ugly lies precisely in the wrong actions when removing excess sprouts.

There are certain secrets on how to correctly perform this simple operation.

What to do and in what order to perform the actions:
before thinning, the beds need to be watered generously from a garden watering can;
The sprout should not be pulled, but pulled straight up from the ground, without swinging it;
it is necessary that there is a distance of 3 or 4 cm between the preserved bushes;

Immediately after the procedure, the garden is watered with warm water.

At the same stage, it is customary to carry out the first hilling of carrots and the first loosening between the rows. And, if the second part of the algorithm does not raise any big questions, there is a lot of controversy about the first.

So – do you need to hill carrots?

Spud up correctly Often even from experienced gardeners you can hear that carrots are not hilled. However, if you are not too lazy to do this painstaking work at least three times during the development of the vegetable, you can protect future harvest

from three misfortunes at once:
from damage to the exposed part of the root by a carrot fly, which likes to lay eggs at the base of the vegetable;
from the protrusion of greenery at the top of the rhizome;

from exposure to direct sunlight, which leaves burns on the root surface of the tops.

Mulching a vegetable How to grow large carrots

and at the same time obviously eliminate the risk of soil drying out, the danger of pest invasion, and also significantly reduce the number of weeding and loosening? For this purpose, there is a technology for covering the soil with mulch, and the technique itself is called “mulching.” What to mulch with? The most common way to mulch a garden bed is to cover the space between the rows of planted vegetables with hay, straw chaff or sawdust. The latter option is preferable, since covering with sawdust retains moisture longer and provides a more reliable shield against the invasion of cabbage grass and other pests.

Covering the soil with sawdust has another important advantage in front of the grass flooring - weeds do not grow through it, while dried grass itself may by default have mature and ready-to-germinate seeds that will grow when in contact with moisture. Small wood chips have the same properties, along with sawdust.

It is recommended to mulch carrots when the outer part of the plant reaches 14-16 cm, and the vegetable itself is about 7-8 cm in diameter at the widest part of the root. Is it possible to mulch root vegetables? late varieties? It is not only possible, but also necessary, since the shelter retains the temperature it receives from the sun during the day for a long time, and as a result, the root crops are juicy and not cracked.

On forums there are often complaints like the following: “I mulch vegetable crop according to all the rules, but the vegetable withers, the tops fall off, and the end result is a horned or otherwise ugly carrot that lacks sweetness.” Important condition Before the procedure, dry the material. Whatever mulching is done, the covering should not rot and thus serve as a habitat for the proliferation of harmful microorganisms. And the secret of withering, falling tops is rotting of the root, to which oxygen does not reach through the dense crust of damp mulch. That's all the secrets of proper mulching.

Common mistakes

Let's name the most common mistakes gardeners make that answer the most common complaints about why carrots don't grow:

the seeds were planted without prior soaking or in insufficiently heated soil (the norm is 7-9 C);
sowing is too deep or the furrow is formed incorrectly (it is necessary to deepen the groove by 2 cm, then tamp its bottom with the edge of the palm or the handle of a hoe);
lack of watering before or after planting, or watering with cold water;
abundant watering of the soil until the sprouts emerge from the soil (until the green brush of sprouted plants appears in the garden bed, you cannot water the garden);
frequent watering with a small amount of water, in which the moisture does not penetrate deep enough;

Why do carrots grow poorly? Perhaps due to the lack of a feeding element throughout the development of the plant. In unrested or depleted soil, vegetables will be thin, pale, and covered with white hairs. A lack of potassium will immediately affect the density of the root - it will become woody, and the lack of phosphorus will affect the taste - the carrot will become tasteless or even sour.