Sowing long carrots
It’s now time to bore holes out in drums and sow my long carrots
I’ve been growing my long carrots outdoors for a few years now after previously growing them under cover in my polytunnel. Personally, I’ve had more success from the ones growing outside. One very noticeable difference between growing them indoors and outside is that the tops are much shorter on those grown outdoors.
I’ll be growing the variety ‘New Red Intermediate’ in plastic pipes 1.2m (4ft) long that sit on a bed of sand. As with parsnips, I now top up the pipes down to 38cm (15in) with fresh sand. Though sand is now getting quite expensive it’s cheaper this way than emptying out and refilling the whole lot. Currently the quality of the roots are good, without any marks or disease on them, so I’ll continue in the same manner until I have to empty them all out. As any shows I’m likely to do are now in September, sowing at this time of year gives me the best possible roots as the sand will be warmer and seed germination more even.
I core out the holes with plastic pipe, evenly spaced out along the top making sure that the pipe is perfectly vertical. I use my own compost mix as so: one 75-litre bag of Levington F2S, 280g (10oz) finely ground calcified seaweed, 110g (4oz) Medwyn’s complete base fertiliser, 85g (3oz) superphosphate, 60g (2oz) NutriMate powder and 10-litres fine grade Vermiculite.
Even though the F2S is a fine grade, after packing in the bags you’ll find some lumps in it so it pays to sieve it as fine as you can. Sieving with a circular sieve is very hard and not easy on the back. Last year I invested in an electronic sieve that I use for both compost and soil and it does the job twice as fast and just as good.
There are four stations in each drum and I sow four or five seed in each station. If you’re sowing outdoors some panes of glass or jamjars over the stations will help towards achieving a more even and earlier germination.