Carrots

[General Schvantzkopf]

My carrots are only about an inch long, has anyone else done any better than that in New England this year?

[Wilson]

sometime in the recent past General Schvantzkopf posted this:

I'm growing in only a 9.5" raised bed, so they tend to be short. But my carrots are better than an 1" around and about 5" long. We didn't get the excess rain everywhere else and I'm assuming you thinned them, right?

[General Schvantzkopf]

No I didn't thin them, would that really make such a big difference?

[phorbin]

Yes.

The roots need room to develop properly.

IIRC they need to be thinned to 2 to 3 inches apart depending on variety.

And if you have a variety like one of the guys around here, maybe 4 inches apart. He grows really ugly, scary huge carrots. ...and they're wonderful

[Wilson]

Some folks mix some 'mortar-type' sand with these small seeds to gain a little spacing. I take a pinch and move my hand while moving my fingers to sprinkle seeds in a row. Still, I thin starting when the fronds are about 5" tall removing stunted ones at first. Then as they grow, I remove the largest carrots first and finally every other one until they're about 2.5" or more apart, as the other poster mentioned.

But I pack my raised bed (3' x 4') of carrots so the rows are only 5" apart. I grow more carrots than the wife & I can eat in a year that way. Thinking of adding on another row of 2"x10"'s to that bed so my carrots get longer. Since the beds are on hard back-filled gravel, the carrots don't go down far.