With the onset of spring, gardeners have a lot of things to do, which is not at all surprising: you need to plow the land, and prepare beds, and deal with the seeds. In order to get a good harvest, you need to work hard, and all season. Here, an old Russian proverb comes to mind very well: "what you sow, you will reap."
What is the autumn harvest without carrots? Juicy, crunchy, and most importantly smooth and large fruits - the dream of any gardener. But not everyone can grow such carrots. Maybe it’s not just about the poorly picked seeds? Let's try to figure out when to sow carrots and how to care for it so that the capricious vegetable delights with a rich harvest.
“Of course, you need to plant it in the spring,” you answer and you will not be quite right. Although the timing of planting vegetables in the infield is approximately the same, this rule does not apply to vegetables such as carrots. There are early ripe, mid-ripening and late ripe varieties of carrots. The first and second are grown for food in the summer, and the last for storage for the winter. The landing dates for them, of course, are different.
Early carrots are generally planted in autumn before winter, or at worst in April, as soon as the snow comes down and the ground thaws a little. Orange vegetable is frost-resistant and easily tolerates a temperature drop of -3 degrees.
When sowing mid-season carrots, aspen will tell you: a popular sign says that it is time to plant a vegetable during the flowering of this tree.
Well, when you sow late carrots, they can tell the lunar calendar. This usually happens in early June, although you can wait a little longer until the middle of the month. Then the vegetable can perfectly lie in the cellar until spring.
So, when we sow carrots, we figured out, now we need to talk a little about choosing a place for a capricious vegetable.
If your personal plot is located in a lowland, then you should think about high bulk beds for carrots, because it does not tolerate excess moisture, although it loves frequent watering. Also, the place should be sunny, as root crops practically do not develop in the shade. Good predecessors for carrots are cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, zucchini, potatoes. That is, she prefers fertile soil rich in mineral fertilizers. However, carrots cannot stand fresh manure. It is best to fertilize one year before rooting. Well, if the soil contains sand,
because carrots love loose and light earth.
Root seeds germinate very poorly because they contain a large amount of essential oils. This makes it difficult to get moisture. Therefore, before planting in the soil, seeds must be prepared. First, they are soaked for several days, changing the water 2-3 times. It would be nice to harden the seeds, lowering them alternately in hot and cold water, but for this you need to observe a strict temperature regime, which is not very convenient in summer conditions. There is another popular way: put the seeds in a linen bag and bury a week before planting to the depth of the shovel bayonet. Before sowing, remove, slightly ventilate and plant at a distance of 1.5 cm from each other, making furrows 10-15 cm.
We hope these simple tips will help you increase the yield of orange root.