Carrots do not require special care, but growing rules must be followed. It is a drought-tolerant crop, tolerates frosts and long-term cooling. How to grow carrots? Secrets, like the rest of the vegetables, lie in the right agricultural technology.
It requires more care than other cultures. Let us consider in more detail how to grow carrots in the country or garden plot with your own hands.
Soil preparation
It is required to choose a bright place before growing carrots. The secrets are that when there is a lack of sunlight due to the falling shade or the uneven surface of the bed, the root crops lose their sugar content and mass.
Before you grow a good crop of carrots, you need to choose a light and even soil. It should be sandy, light loam, with good drainage. In dense loam, the fruits grow small, during storage they are quickly affected by rot. Carrots should not be planted on acidic soils. It requires a neutral or slightly acidic environment.
Before you grow a good carrot, you need to prepare the soil.
The bed is prepared in the fall so that it settles down. It is made loose. To do this, add sawdust, humus, peat or sand. Chalk, lime, dolomite, ash are used for liming. Manure for growing carrots should not be used, since not very beautiful and poorly stored root crops are obtained. Humus should be added to poor soil - per bucket per square meter. If groundwater is close, the bed is made high.
The arable layer is well formed using the roots of green manure - plants that create a good soil structure. They are sown on a bed in the autumn in order to plant carrots in this place in the spring. Worms and microorganisms also create a good soil structure.
Carrot beds should be constantly changed. The precursors should be garlic, onions, cabbage, potatoes. How to grow large carrots if you have to grow the same crop in one place? The application of wood ash twice a year in an amount of 0.2 kg / m 2 with subsequent digging will help here.
In the spring, a week before planting, the bed is leveled, loosened, treated with a 0.3% solution of vitriol, watered with warm water, and then covered with a film of polyethylene. During this time, it will retain moisture and warm well in the sun.
How to prepare seeds for sowing
Germination in carrot seeds is small - 55-75%. In this regard, seeds should be taken fresh. In addition, carrots are not characterized by uniform germination. After 2-3 weeks, the first sprouts should appear. Seeds germinate for a long time due to the presence on their surface of essential oils that slow the penetration of moisture.
Before you grow good carrots, seeds must be prepared for sowing. Consider several ways to pre-germinate them.
Soak
Seeds are poured into fabric bags and kept in warm water for 24 hours. Water needs to be changed every four hours. From it you can make a nutrient solution by adding wood ash (30 g / l). After the seeds need to be rinsed.
The method will be more effective if hardening is additionally performed. Seeds in wet bags are placed in the refrigerator for 2-5 days.
Nutrient Soaking
Use a weak solution of potassium permanganate with the addition of ½ teaspoon of fertilizer per liter of water or a mixture of nitrophosphate and boric acid (1/3 teaspoon and 1/2 teaspoon per liter of water, respectively). Seeds are scattered on gauze folded several times, and also covered with it on top and poured with a solution for a day. The fluid level should be just above the fabric. Then they are washed with water and put away in the refrigerator for three to four days.
If the weather does not allow seeds to be planted, they are left on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, keeping them moistened all the time. In this case, you need to ensure that they do not sprout by more than 0.5 cm.
Heat treatment
Heat treatment of seeds consists in their sequential immersion in hot and cold water. They are poured into a bag and rinsed at a temperature of 50 degrees, and then dipped in a humate solution and kept warm for two days. As a result, the germination of not only carrots but also parsley and dill is accelerated.
Sparging
Sparging speeds up the seed preparation process. A hose for supplying air or oxygen with an emery stone filter at the end is fed to the bottom of a non-metallic water tank. Place a seed grid on top.
In the process of sparging, water is saturated with air. At home, a small aquarium compressor is enough for this. The time for bubbling carrot seeds is 17-24 hours. After the material is removed to the middle shelf of the refrigerator, where it is stored for 3-5 days. Before sowing, the seeds are dried for 12 hours, so that they become loose, and sown.
Burying seeds in the soil
Dry seeds are placed in cloth bags and buried in the soil with a shovel to the depth of one bayonet, where they must be at least 10-12 days. Then they get out and sow in a bed. After such treatment, seedlings should appear in five days.
Another way is to mix the seeds with wet peat and keep them in a warm place for at least one week. During this period they manage to germinate, after which they are sown. Before planting in the soil, the seeds are dried for 20-25 minutes on parchment or fabric at room temperature.
How to grow carrots. Secrets of sowing and care
Before planting, seeds that are most suitable for a particular region are selected and purchased. You can also get them yourself. Before growing carrot seeds, you should find a good and large root crop, and then plant it in the spring. By autumn, it will ripen.
Carrots grow for about three months. To get the crop in September, planting should be done no later than May. Sowing dates take the period from the end of April to the first decade of June. The optimal landing is May 5.
Before winter, carrots are planted when the soil is cold enough. It can be a period from late October to early November. The timing of sowing and harvesting depends on the variety and region. Northern varieties in the south should not be planted, as they will grow slowly. If southern varieties are grown in the middle zone, they produce abundant tops, but root crops do not develop at the same time. Some varieties bred abroad are poorly stored.
Harvesting should be done on time, otherwise the useful properties and keeping quality of root crops may deteriorate.
Small carrot seeds should be spread evenly in the groove. Therefore, they are mixed with sand or peat and sown in the garden.
How to grow carrots so that neighboring rows do not interfere with it? To ensure sufficient illumination, beds are best made narrow - no more than four rows of carrots.
Borders are made along the edge to prevent water from draining. The distance between the rows should be 15 cm, and for late varieties - 20 cm. The bed is watered and sprinkled with ash. Seeds are placed in grooves at a distance of about 2.5 cm.
During spring-summer plantings, swollen seeds are planted shallow - 3-4 cm. They should be sprinkled with very light soil, which is used as a chernozem mixed with peat, sand or humus. Then, a ventilation gap is made over the bed from the film at a distance of about 12-15 cm.
The first shoots in warm weather appear in a week. If the temperature is below 12 degrees, the time is doubled. If there are empty seats, additional sowing is done.
For many gardeners, the question of how to grow early carrots is a problem. In fact, it is not difficult. In the autumn, early carrot varieties are sown to a depth of 2 cm, and then sprinkled with mulch to a height of 3-4 cm. In this case, the soil temperature should be below +5 degrees. When there is little snow in winter, the beds additionally cover them to a height of up to 50 cm. With this method of planting, the crop is harvested 2-3 weeks earlier than usual.
Thinning plants
How to grow a good crop of carrots, if it sprouts well? To do this, you need to carefully thin out the seedlings after the appearance of the third leaf.
All this is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In order for the plants to be well removed, the bed should be watered and the soil carefully loosened. In addition, the operation should be performed during the day so as not to attract a pest - a carrot fly flying in the evening.
Sprouts should be removed with tweezers, leaving a distance of at least 2 cm. The smallest shoots are removed. The tops are thrown away from the garden. In no case should you leave it nearby, so as not to attract pests. A good deterrent is onion arrows, which are crushed and scattered on the bed. You can cover the crops with special material. The ground around the plants is crushed a little. After 20 days, thinning is repeated. At the same time, a distance of 6 cm is left between the carrots.
Aisles are required to loosen and weed (at least once a week), so that a sufficient amount of oxygen arrives at the roots. After thinning the aisle, mulch with compost or sawdust soaked for several weeks in a 2-3% urea solution.
How to grow large carrots? Here you need the right dosage of fertilizers. They can not be applied immediately in large quantities. Carrot beds begin to fertilize with mineral water when 5-6 sheets appear. The frequency of feeding is 2-4 weeks. This crop especially does not like excess nitrogen.
In the process of growth, the upper part of the root crop leaves the earth and turns green. It does no harm, but the taste gets worse. How to grow a sweet carrot so that it does not lose its taste? When root crops emerge from the earth, they are spudded, raking on them a ground about 50 mm high.
Watering carrot beds
Poor germination of carrots is associated primarily with drying out the soil. Until it has ascended, the top layer of the bed should be constantly moist. Sometimes the land should be watered even several times a day. Particularly difficult to sprout granular seeds. Immediately after sowing, the bed is protected with a film so that the top layer does not dry out.
Until the roots appear, watering is done after 3-4 days, 3-4 buckets per 1 m 2 . At the same time, they independently grow in depth and find moisture. Therefore, watering is carried out once a week for 1-2 buckets per m 2 , and since the end of August - 1 time in 1.5-2 weeks at 8-10 liters per square. Two weeks of beds are maintained without watering before harvesting.
Rough root crops are an indication that they lacked moisture. With its excess, the fruits grow small. Sharp changes from drying to excess moisture are also harmful, leading to cracking of carrots and subsequent poor preservation.
Carrots are not afraid of cold weather, but at temperatures below 8 degrees starch in root crops turns into sugar, root keeping quality deteriorates. In the middle lane, the crop is harvested at the end of September in dry weather.
Harvested carrots are dried for 1.5-2 hours, and then the tops are cut. The crop is sorted, flat carrots are placed in a ventilated box in a dark and cool place. It can be a cellar or a cellar.
Conclusion
You will never be able to harvest a good crop if you do not know how to grow carrots. The secrets of agricultural technology are the proper preparation of the soil, proper planting and care. As a result, in the fall you will get large and even root crops.