Carrots are one of the best staple crops you can grow in any garden. Not only are carrots easy to grow, they’re incredibly versatile when it comes to their use. They’re an important part of basic cooking, a healthy snack on their own, and long-lasting root vegetable that is easy to store keeping your house stocked! While carrots have all these benefits, the biggest benefit of all is how quickly you can get these at home in a simple garden.
The Basics of Planting Carrots
Carrots, while easy to grow, still have some basic conditions that need to be met for them grow properly. Like all plants they have preferences on soil conditions, light levels, and how close they are to each other. Being root vegetables, spacing for carrots is of extreme importance, as planting them too close together will cause them to deform, and planting them too far apart will waste valuable space in your home garden.
Most carrots grow well during the cooler parts of spring or fall seasons. Being a frost tolerant plant makes them ideal for most gardens that would otherwise leave spaces open or unused during these risky planting times. While they typically grow best in cooler times of the year, carrots can easily make it through summer in most places in the US as well and are a crop that can be planted and harvested multiple times a year through the whole growing season.
Carrots, like a lot of root vegetables, prefer to be planted in loose sandy soils. Just like with crowding, dense soils can also cause carrots to grow misshapen! To avoid this you want to create soil conditions that make it easier for the roots to extend down into the soil and push out as they store more and more nutrients. Let’s look more closely at the soil conditions that are ideal for most varieties of carrots!
Soil Conditions for Growing Carrots
No matter what plants you are growing, soil is one of the most important factors when it comes to producing quality plants. Carrots are a little more picky than your other common garden vegetables as they need not only the right soil nutrients, but they also need a well conditioned soil that is loose enough for them to grow.
Ideal soil for carrots will be free of rocks, clay, or other hard materials. The soil should be well tilled and loose down to at least 1 foot (12 inches). Additionally, if you ground is too hard or has too many rocks to till deeply you may want to consider raised bed planting instead which gives you much more control over the soil itself. Raised beds tend to be ideal for carrots, but are certainly not required if you can keep the ground soil conditions right.
Soil Nutrition and Fertilizers
Carrots like a loose soil, but they also like soil that has a high amount of organic matter and can drain well. They grow best with moderate levels of nitrogen as too much nitrogen will cause them to branch and grow tougher hairier roots. Beyond this, carrots prefer a low level of phosphorus and potassium. They also like a slightly more acidic soil with a pH between 5.5 and 7. If you can, you should check your soil pH before planting with a simple pH kit. This can save you a lot of heartache later on in the season!
In addition to these soil characteristics, it is also a good idea to avoid planting carrots in the same soil that you’ve grown carrots in the previous year. You should also avoid planting them where you’ve planted close relatives of the plant or similarly nutrition type plants. These may include celery, fennel, dill, parsley, or parsnips, to name a few.
Soil Temperature and Growing Climate
Carrots like cooler soil temperatures and warmer leaf temperatures. Because of this it becomes advantageous to mulch or straw cover your soil to keep the soil temperature lower as the carrots grow. In addition to keeping the carrots at their ideal growing temperature this will also help prevent weeds from propagating in the bed.
After planting, carrots germinate and start growing in about a week in temperatures of around 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (21-24 C). In lower temperatures carrots will still grow, but germination will take longer. Below 45 F (7 C) carrots tend not to germinate at all.
Warm days and cool nights will produce the best carrots with the most flavor.
Planting Carrots
Carrots are a crop that should be grown directly from seed in the garden or raised bed. If growing right in the ground the carrots should be planted in rows that are 5 to 7 inches apart with each seed being spaced 2 to 3 inches apart for best growth.
If you are planting carrots in a raised bed you can plant more densely and keep them roughly 3 inches apart in a grid pattern.
Carrots should be planted individually from seed. Simply plant the seeds a quarter inch (1cm) deep and cover loosely. Carrot seeds do not have a large amount of stored energy to push their seed leaves up through the soil, so if you plant them too deep they may fail to sprout.
Do not use a broad sow and thinning method. If you don’t take care when spreading your carrot seeds they may begin growing too close together and stunt each plants growth. If you plant a few seeds together to keep your plot from having empty spaces, you will need to thin them as they spout to ensure that there is adequate room for each plant.
Thinning should be done a few days after the sprouts come up and should be done with scissors or garden snips. Do not pull sprouts to thin your carrots as disrupting the soil early on can damage the root system and cause your carrots to grow misshapen, poorly, or not at all.
This is another reason mulching your carrots as they grow is a good idea, because it is risky to have to pull weeds that grow nearby them.
Watering Carrots
Once you plant your seeds you need to keep your carrots watered appropriately. Before the carrot seeds sprout you should water them daily. If you are in a drier area and you find the bed completely dries out over the course of day, you may need to water your carrot seeds twice daily.
At this stage watering more frequently with less water will help the seeds stay moist and sprout under ideal conditions.
Once your carrot seeds sprout you will begin to reduce your watering gradually down to once a week. The general rule is that carrots need an inch of water a week to grow properly.
In dried climates this may not be adequate and you can check the soil with your finger at an inch deep. If the soil is moist an inch below the surface you do not need to water the carrots further.
By watering your carrots more heavily, but less frequently during their growth you encourage the carrots roots to grow deeper and straighter which yields better carrots for storage. Over watering or watering too frequently can cause them to grow misshapen.
As your carrots approach full growth near the end of their growing cycle increase the amount of water used, but not the frequency that you water. This will cause the carrots to develop better size and flavor in the last few weeks before harvesting.
While these watering rules may seem very strict, they’re not always necessary. If you can’t water your carrots in this fashion you should still be able to produce a harvestable crop, but your carrots may be smaller or not as well shaped.
How Long Does it Take Carrots to Grow?
Carrots typically grow from seed to harvestable vegetable in 60 to 80 days depending on the variety and growing conditions. Carrots are fully grown when their roots are 1 to 1 1/2 inches (2-4 cm) across. Carrots can grow to be much larger, but larger carrots do not necessarily improve overall flavor or yield from a plot.
If you grow your carrots too long in hopes that they will get larger, they have a good chance of bolting (flowering) and will no longer be good to eat as they use the energy stored in the roots to create flowers and seeds. If this happens to your carrots, don’t rip them up and throw them out, instead grow them for seed stock for the next season.
Harvesting Carrots
To harvest a carrot, simply loosen the soil around the top of the your fingers, grip the top of the carrot and gently pull. If you’ve grown your carrots properly, they will be straight and have very few branching hairs on them which makes them much easier to pull from the soil.
In cases where your carrots have grown misshapen or your soil was a bit to firm, carrots can be a little harder to harvest. If this is the case you can still harvest them normally, but may have to unearth a bit more soil before them come out easily. In cases where they seem stuck, break out a simple garden spade and lightly dig them out.
Remember, misshapen carrots are still good carrots. The straighter the carrot the easier it is to harvest and store, but even gnarled carrots are great to eat.
Storing Carrots
Once harvested cut the leaves from the carrot about an inch above the root. The leaves are great for compost so don’t just throw them away. After trimming the leaves store the carrots in a high humidity environment, 95% humidity is best and keep them as cool as possible without freezing. When stored in idea conditions carrots can last for up to 6 months.
If stored in a standard fridge in the US your carrots may begin to dry out and wrinkle. This is because the fridge is too dry. You can combat this by using your fridges crisper draw and adjusting the settings.
If you don’t have ideal storage conditions for carrots they will still keep for quite awhile, but just not as long. In these cases just keep an eye on them and be sure to use them before they get soft or rubbery. If any carrots go bad simply add them to your compost.