Karen Johnson, a Valley gardener, wrote in to share some additional information about growing carrots: Saturday, May 26: Alaska Botanical Garden plant sale. If, like many home gardeners, you are attracted to the idea of growing your own salad, carrots should be on your list, right after lettuce and spinach. Remove the mulch in the spring and, if all goes well, you may have a two-to-three-week jump on the season," she said. "Cover it with clear polyethylene and a six-inch layer of leaves. Break up the "crust of frosty soil" and rake in broadcast seed. In "The Alaska Gardener's Handbook," Lenore Hedla suggests a fall planting after you've harvested your summer crop. A raised bed or mounded rows takes care of this with minimum fuss. That means you have to make sure the soil is easy for them to grow through: 8-12 inches of well-worked, clumpless, good draining soil. They'll twist around anything in their way, split or stop growing. Be safe, plant some seeds and some tape.Ĭarrots grow down and they don't like obstructions as they push underground. However, be warned, not everyone is happy with how the tape works. Yes, it can be done, but it's annoying.Īn alternative is to use seed tape. Just try dropping one seed at a time in a straight row. You have presumably figured out what your soil needs by way of added nutrients.Ĭarrots like a fertilizer with a large middle number or some bone meal, according to Margaret.Ĭarrot seeds are a hair larger than dust, a real pain to handle. Don't plant them all at once so you can harvest over time. For a variety promising "super tasty, nutritious, sweet and tender" (we'll see), Territorial Seed Company offers Sugarsnax 54. If you're concerned about your carrots having to push down too far, try Nantes Half Long.The Cooperative Extension Service recommends Nantes Coreless and Nantes Scarlet Coleman also recommends the Scarlet. Varieties of the Nantes carrot are popular recommendations from experienced local gardeners.They can take up to three weeks to germinate but warmer soil can shorten this some. To get warm soil earlier, prepare a raised bed or plant them in mounded rows.Plant the seeds outside when the soil warms up. So it took assurances from Margaret at Alaska Mill and Feed and Anna at Sutton's Greenhouse to sell the idea that a weekend gardener can grow great carrots - grow them all summer and deep into the fall, with a little special attention. They take a long time and grow crooked or something. Coleman claimed the ones he grows in Maine are so sweet children demand them.īut one of the unschooled rumors about gardening in Anchorage is that carrots don't do so well in home gardens here. Eliot Coleman's enthusiasm for growing carrots in cold climates planted the seed.ĭuring his visit here last month, the extended-season guru raved about how great carrots grown in cool weather taste - the colder it gets, the more sugar they produce, he said.
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