Grow year-round carrots
PuLLIng home-grown carrots from the earth is such a satisfying experience – and a fun one if you’ve a child or grandchild in tow, too! They emerge from the soil with a lovely ‘pop’ so let me reveal how to harvest them for 12 months of the year.
Three or four sowings will do this because the roots mature over a long period and keep in the soil well during cold spells. The first I made in February, into an old wine crate (any tub that’s at least 8in/20cm deep will do).
I lined the crate with polythene, filled it with seed compost and sowed a quick-maturing early variety (in my case ‘Amsterdam Forcing’ but ‘nantes’ works well, too).
By mid May I was pulling marvellous baby roots. In mid March I also began sowing outside. I choose the rootflyresistant varieties ‘Flyaway’ and ‘resistafly’. My belt-and-braces approach is to also cloak these sowings in a tunnel of enviromesh, which prevents root flies accessing the crop.
The result is 100 per cent pest-free roots (if you love carrots make another outdoor sowing now to keep summer harvests coming in).
My final sowing in early August will be of ‘Autumn King’ (again I cover this with mesh until november). These can be pulled from October until May. replace mesh with a mulch of straw in autumn to insulate from winter cold and spring heat, or lift and store in boxes of sand if slugs are troublesome.