Carrots
The first vegetable that I’m really interested in growing are carrots. The challenge in this is that I’m restricted with no where to plant them into the ground. We’re currently staying with my wife’s dad and I’d rather leave as little impact as possible. So hopefully if I do this right you might be able to follow the process even if you live in an apartment!
S o I went out and have done a little reading about carrots. I couldn’t find anything about growing them in pots not that I expected to. So I’ve got to adapt the information to my situation.
So carrots like hot, dry, well drained soil. The very first thing that I’ll do then is borrow an idea that my wife had ages ago and line the bottom of the pot with a layer of pebbles to support drainage. Her original idea was when we had some large water troughs in the yard but I imagine the concept will still work.
I’ve also got just the spot on the deck that gets a fair amount of sun and even though I’m planting at the wrong time of the year it should be warm enough. I’m cheating slightly in this first project by buying seedlings instead of growing from seed. It’s not something I’m happy with because when I transferred them I had a lot of trouble trying to protect the roots. One of the plants lost half its roots in the process so I’m going to have to keep an eye on it to see if it recovers.
I’ve picked a pretty big pot that was lying around (hey we’re on a budget here so no fancy pots for me!) and since I’ve started with baby carrots they should have enough room to grow. I read that carrots take a lot of nutrient from the soil so after planting I’ve also added a seaweed based fertiliser as well as a good soaking.
Before I finish I want to mention the soil. This again is not the best situation as I’ve used pretty budget potting mix that is pretty coarse which is not what you want for carrots. If they hit something hard then the carrot has trouble so all it takes is a little bit of wood chip or rock. I tried to make sure that it is pretty loose and we’ll see how successful I am!
The only concerns I have tonight are birds and rodents basically stealing the seedlings from the pot. My two dogs are sleeping on the same deck so fingers crossed that they take care of the problem.
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