The Carrots are Ready
Jo was on a really mission this year to try and grow carrots. Unless you buy organic ones they're one of the most chemical soaked vegetables you can find, alongside lettuce, so he was really determined to try and grow our own.
As with many allotment sites carrot fly is rife on ours so it's impossible to even think about growing them without some kind of protection. The first attempt was in an outdoor bed with fleece making a fence around the sides of them but this was a total failure - the fleece kept blowing away in the windy weather that we had is spring. Carrots are also very fussy if the soil isn't fine enough for them and clearly our soil wasn't fine enough because not a single one germinated but he was still determined and Jo set to preparing our next carrot bed.
It was in the same place as we'd already tried but he really worked the soil so it was as fine as it could possibly be, adding loads of sand to make it even finer. This time they were still covered in fleece but more in a cloche style so the carrots were totally covered. It's also really important that the fleece around the edges is well bedded into the soil as well because if those pesky flies can find a way in they certainly will. The main problem with this was that it was so secure that it was hard to see what was going on with the crop so we had to make a couple of holes to peep through, letting us keep an eye on the couple of seeds that actually germinated. A second failure!
The final attempt was in the greenhouse. We've got a big wooden planter that we grow early courgettes in so Jo decided to have a go at planting them in there in a mixture of new and used potting compost and finally...success! I'm not sure how well they would have done in a hotter summer because the greenhouse has remained relatively cool this year but this time round it's worked perfectly. The carrots taste brilliant and we've got enough to keep us going at least some way into the autumn. Delicious.
