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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

As always, great gardening post, James.

Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

> Now I plant them two ways:  In beds made of small ridges 4" or so apart.  I 
> can identify the location of the carrots by the ridges and weed the rest clean, 
> also I can water in the space between ridges without washing out the tiny 
> seeds.  When the carrots have established themselves, I fill in the troughs 
> between ridges with compost to level the bed once more.

That is kind of what I have been doing with the short, parallel rows.

> A second method is this: and it comes from the observations of my failed 
> attempts to transplant them.  Hairy carrots do not result so much from too much 
> fertility as it does from too much fertility close to the surface.  The 
> no-till-teetotalers depend on earthworms to drag organic material own rather than mix 
> it in mechanically.  This tends to have the upper layers more fertile than the 
> lower layers.  
>
> The carrot's game plan is to decide how big a tap root it will use to store 
> food, then send down the root to a certain depth and branch the roothairs from 
> there.  If it finds the upper layers very fertile but the lower ones not, it 
> has no recourse but to send out root hairs from the swollen root.
>
> So here is my second way:  I get a really fertile bed prepared usually by 
> applying a lot of chicken manure and or rabbit manure (plus wood ashes which also 
> contain potassium and calcium).  Then I cover that with some inert organic 
> material or else very low fertility material such as neutralized peat, half 
> rotten sawdust, light compost with a lot of creek sand.  This inert-ish material 
> goes on 4" thick or better.  Carrot seeds are broadcast on top.  Weeds are 
> mimimum but kept religiouisly pulled.
>
> The carrot looks at the medium in which it has sprouted and immediately sends 
> down the tiny taproot until it finds the very fertile ground beneath.  It 
> doesn't bother to branch the taproot before that because it knows it would do it 
> little good.

That makes a lot of sense, and since I generally layer the top of that 
bed with fine compost to make a seeding area for small seeds like 
carrots, that is exactly what is happening.  My top layer is too rich.
Hairy Carrot Mystery Solved.


> The very best garden carrot I've found is Touchon (Nichols carries it, I 
> think).  It is a bit short, but ideally suited for the type of cultivation I'm 
> doing.  The last few years I've grown those white, red, yellow, and purple 
> carrots offered by, among others, Baker Creek.  They did really well with the white 
> ones being the most tricky to get a good roots.
>
> Plant carrots all the time.  OK, with the freezy-frosty on us the next couple 
> of weeks, maybe not today exactly.  But just as soon as this worst breath of 
> winter passes, plant some carrots.  Cover the planting with an inch of sawdust 
> or peat or some such and if a ground heave threatens, cover it with a tarp of 
> straw or some such.  Then in three weeks or so, plant some more, then more 
> and more all the way to early November.
>
> When you pull your first carrots, cut off the tops leaving about 1/2" of 
> carrot and plant them back in the garden.  Within a very short time you will have 
> another crop of carrots.  Sometimes I prepare a bed in the garden and take a 
> basket and knife and as I harvest the carrots I want for the next couple of 
> days, I simply turn to the other bed and plant the tops back (tops, leaves, and 
> all).  The same top will often produce carrots for three years.  


Get out!
No way!
Are you kidding me?
<sigh>

 1/11/2009 5:57 PM
>

--
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will 
not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius 
will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the 
world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone 
are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve 
the problems of the human race"

~ Calvin Coolidge