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[EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>]

Pulling an old thread out of the hat..<G>

First, I should say that DH has decided he wants to learn to garden-this
from a man who never had one and who never really participated in any
gardening chore ever, except to help me build my raised beds.  So the
season has been a bit interesting as he has all the newbie questions and
ideas and he's been talking to the guys at work who are typical Southern
row farmers, which means corn, tomatoes, and crookneck squash, maybe
some beans and peppers, and lots and lots of Sevin (or worse).  So
there's a lot of educatin' goin on, and while I know many of you wish
you had a willing partner, I can tell you that I am ready to pull my
hair out because he keeps wanting to re-invent gardening <vbg>
I have my own way of doing things and I am a stubborn Taurean with dirty
hands.
Having said all of that, I have always taken a minimal approach to
things, and he wants better.  For example, I use sticks and branches
collected from the woods and make bean teepees for pole beans.  To me,
that is easy and esthetically pleasing, but DH wants to built stuff, so
he spent the day building bamboo trellis.  That's cool, too.  The other
thing he built today, after a discussion about carrots and a re-read of
this post from James, was a dedicated carrot/root crops bed.  It is
unfilled at present, but it won't be for long.  I'm trying to get it
filled so that I can plant some carrots and beets and radishes in it in
about 6 weeks.  It is 10 feet long and 2 feet wide and 20 inches deep.
All the high nitrogen stuff will go in the bottom(waste hay, chicken and
horse manure, etc. , and fertility will decrease as we go up.  The top
layer will be a mixture of peat, sand, and sawdust as James suggested.
My dilemma is the same as always, which way to orient the bed.  If I
make it East/West, it is really going to impede flow in the garden.   It
will look out of place and create small, hard to tend spaces.  The only
E/W place I have that gets enough sun is right next to the hazelnuts and
blueberries, and as they grow, it would shade that bed from the south
side, but since blueberries and hazelnuts have a rangy habit, it would
be filtered shade.
Considering the heat of summer, shade may not be a bad thing, which
brings me to my second option.  I have a good spot, out of the way,
oriented North South right next to my compost bin.  The bin is made of
pallets, so it is 4 feet tall and 12 feet long(3 section bin)  If I put
the carrot bed near the compost bin, the compost bin will be on the west
side and provide shade in the late afternoon for the carrots. (It will
be deep shade as 4 ft > 20 in.)
Also in N/S orientation, I have one other spot I could put the bed, and
since it is a raised bed, this 'problem spot' really isn't a problem,
but Option 3 is in a low area where water sits after a rain.  It is
inside the garden fence but not really part of the 'tillable' area
because it is almost always wet there. (I think there is a spring in
that area)  The real problem with that spot is that it wouldn't get much
sun until the afternoon and evening.

So James, given those three options of orientation/location, what should
I choose?


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.
>
> 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.
--
"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