Carrots are thinned

Carrots are thinned

Peter Norris
April 21, 2016

This year, I have decided for a change to make an effort to thin out the carrots. It's the kitchen garden's most tedious pill work that I usually neglect or completely skip, and the result is also usually then: too many small crooked and branched giggles which is a pain to peel. So today I have pulled myself together and gone to my knees. Last year I had bad experiences with the germination of some Danish carrot seeds, so this year the seeds were picked in England and sown closer than I usually do. And unfortunately, the germination ability of the seeds picked up at Dobies has been excellent, so about 90% of the small sprouts have been removed so that there could be about 3 cm between the remaining ones.

The varieties Amsterdam Forcing (a classic carrot for driving that I have not tried before) and Early Nantes 5 were sown in the manure bank in mid-March when the soil temperature had climbed above 8 °. The ground was covered with non-woven fabric inside the bench partly to keep the ground heat further, and partly to keep the ground moist. The water was watered a couple of times directly on top of the tablecloth - the method is also quite useful when sowing in the middle of summer to prevent drying out and promote germination - and after a few weeks the first sprouts appeared.

In the outer rows, radishes are sown and eaten during May - leaving room to plant a melon in each corner of the mist bench in mid-June. The idea is that the carrots can continue to develop until harvest in late June before the melons take over. One of this year's trials that I have no idea