It seems that on our trips to the allotment through summer we spent most of our time watering crops. One of those crops that we concentrated our "watering time" on was our carrots. Last year our carrots failed miserably and we wanted a better crop this year. Our carrots were sown on 04 May and germination was excellent.
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| Carrots - Early Market, Flakkee & Autumn King sown 04 May 2018 |
Not only was germination good but the young seedlings avoided the ravages the slugs normally carry out and went on to provide some really good plants. To keep carrot root flies off the crop, as usual the carrots were covered with environmesh from sowing right through into the middle of September.
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| 25 June 2018 |
Summer brought with it drought conditions. Our carrots by this time were growing well and we decided to water them well on a regular basis in the hope of getting a good crop.
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| 17 July 2018 |
Judging by the tops the carrots were enjoying both the water and the hot days we were having. In the middle of July we decided to dig up a few carrots and see if the magnificent looking tops had produced any decent carrots.
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| Carrot - Early Market - harvested 17 July 2018 |
We were very pleased with the roots we dug up and we've been digging up a few roots on most of our visits to the plot. We are still harvesting "Early Market" a variety we've grown as an early variety and we hadn't investigated any roots of our main crop varieties to see how they had performed. Last week we decided it was time to see how they'd done.
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| Carrots - Autumn King - harvested 19 October 2018 |
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| Carrots - Flakkee - harvested 19 October 2018 |
I didn't intend to harvest any great amount of carrots but just enough to see if like "Early Market" the carrots lived up to the expectation that the tops provided. Fortunately, for us that's proved to be the case and it looks like we have a bumper crop of carrots without too much pest damage. We aim to leave the carrots in the ground over winter and harvest them as required. To protect them from any frost damage I'm aiming to cover the tops with straw to give them some protection from any cold and frosty weather.
The video below shows our first Flakkee and Autumn Kings carrots being dug up.
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Delighted for you. (I play on the safe side and leave the mesh on - it helps keep the straw from blowing away!)
ReplyDeleteI shouldn't say this but we don't normally have a problem with straw blowing away. Parsnips are next on the list to be tested!
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