It's October in South Georgia, which means it's time to plant our carrots now
I'm a little behind. I'd usually like to get these in the ground
Early to mid October but with the late summer we had just got me behind on planting everything
so here I am the end of October kind of right before Halloween
Finally gonna get these carrots planted. If this is your first time on our channel,
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It's always good to have you back. So in addition to things like onions and garlics and leeks and shallots
Carrots are a crop that we like to overwinter
That means we plant them in the fall and then we grow them over the winter and harvest them in early spring
Carrots do really well when they're over wintered now
They'll take a lot longer than if you plant them in the spring because the temps are gonna be cool
They're not going to be growing as fast but those cool mornings where we get a little kiss of frost on those carrots
we'll make those carrots so much more sweeter than if we grow them in a warm season, so
throughout the winter time,
Overwintering them is my favorite way to grow carrots. Today
We're going to be planting carrots in one of the six crops. I have here in my dream garden
These plots are 30 by 35 feet. I had tomatoes planted in this plot in the spring and
I've added a good bit of organic material to this soil since then the soil was kind of
Not very workable when I had those tomatoes in it
but I had some wheat straw around those tomatoes and
upon the
recommendations or suggestions of several of our subscribers
I've tilled that wheat straw into the soil which helped make the soil a lot more workable
And then I also had a big cover crop of Sunn Hemp. That's what you see here some of those leftover stems
Some sunn hemp in here, they got pretty tall and I mowed it and got it nice and chopped up
So this soil in just a you know matter of a few months is a lot better shape
Than when we started. So I came out here the other day and went ahead and got my drip tape laid
To plant my carrots. I've got my mainline run here
My drip lines are running perpendicular to that, got my filter
Regulator set up here where my water hose is going to hook up to feed that mainline
And then those drip lines with carrots. We like to plant them on what we call double rows
That means we plant two rows per one line of drip tape
After I buried my drip tape with the drip tape layer, and if you've never seen that in action
We've got plenty of videos where you can watch that little tool. It's quite handy but
Anyway, my drip tape layer makes two little kind of mini furrows here on both sides of the tape as its covering the tape
Then I came in here with my little triangle hoe just a little small
long handle tool and made these furrows just a hair bit deeper and a little more defined and
That's where I'll be planting my carrots on both sides the tape here now carrots are pretty easy to grow but there's a few
obstacles that some people seem to have that might prevent them from having a really great carrot crop and before we plant those
Carrots today, I want to talk about three things
That you want to make sure you do to have a successful carrot crop. Number one is you've got to keep that seed bed
moist throughout the germination process
Carrots can take a little longer to germinate
Then some crops, you know
A lot of times they'll take 7 to 14 days to germinate so you've got to keep that seed bed nice and moist
The drip tape can help with that and a lot of times after I plant the carrots
I'll run the drip all night just to soak that seed bed really well. Today
I'm probably gonna take my tripod sprinkler and water this in cause this area is a little dry here and
Just make sure I soak that area and you want to keep it wet until you see those little carrot sprout
Coming out of the soil once that happens
You can back off the water a little bit but to get optimal germination. You've got to keep that seed bed wet
Every day until they germinate. The second big problem
I see with people planting carrots is they just don't plant them thick enough, you know
Most of the thing we grow in our vegetable garden, we're planting in a single linear row
so corn or beans or squash or stuff like that one seed followed by another seed followed by another seed.
Everything's in a nice little neat line with carrots, you really want to plant them in a band
So you're not planting them one seed after another there
You're kind of just making a little band that say, you know
Three to four inches wide there and those carrots are going to be densely planted in that band.
That's going to give you a really nice thick stand of carrots
Now if you really want all the same size carrots, you can plant them in that linear row
But we like all different sized carrots and we found it just works better
if you plant them real thick and real dense in a band as
opposed to a single row and the third reason that someone might have difficulty planting or growing carrots is
Simply that their weed pressure is too high
Because carrots take longer to germinate if you've got some heavy weed pressure
Those weeds are going to quickly outpace those carrot sprouts.
So you don't want to plant carrots in an area of the garden
Or in a garden spot where you have a lot of weed pressure.
Now a couple things you can do to reduce that weed pressure. Is that frequent shallow cultivation?
We always talk about like with the wheel hoe go in there
You know a couple times a week and really just kill any new weeds that form and kind of stir up that soil there
So that those weeds that are buried a little bit can germinate that will really help to reduce your weed pressure also tarping
so I had this area here tarped after I mowed or cut that sunn hemp and the tarp really helps to make your
Weed seed bank really reduced and you'll have less weed pressure so those carrots
don't have to compete with the weeds when they're really small.
So I've got eleven rows laid out in this 30 by 35 plot. I've got my rows spaced three feet apart
Now in the past I have grown carrots on two foot rows
but what I found is that when I grow them really close together, it's harder to get in there and harvest them.
So,
When I'm harvesting carrots
I like to put this little basket
between the rows and this is what I use to pick them and put them in or pull them and
Put them in, my rows are too close. I can't fit this down in between the rows
So that's why I put them on three-foot rows as opposed to two
Gives me a little more space to get in between there and harvest the carrots as I want too. Now
I know a lot of you are thinking man, that is a ton of carrots who needs 11, 30-foot rows of carrots
You're never going to use that many carrots.
Well me and the wife do have little weekly CSA/vegetable bag operation and in our area of South, Georgia
There's not a lot of people growing carrots specially not the specialty carrots like some of the yellow and purple ones
We'll be planting today
So we have a pretty high demand for our carrots come early spring and we've been growing them for three or four years now
So a lot of people really like our carrots and they expect them so we don't want to disappoint
so we're gonna grow a whole plot of carrots and
won't any of them go to waste we'll be able to get rid of them pretty easy and we'll even
Eat a lot of them ourselves
We like to freeze them so we can use them in roast
Later in the year when it's too hot to grow carrots
Now another reason we like to grow so many carrots is just so we can show you guys what they all look like
When they grow out so we like to grow a lot of different kinds for our viewers
So they can see what they look like and maybe determine which varieties they want to grow. So in no particular order
I'll go through these so we've got this Danvers
126, which is kind of your Bugs Bunny carrot. It's got a real broad shoulder on it kind of tapers down.
We've got this Bolero here, which is a hybrid variety and this is one of my favorites one of my really good producers
Really like this bolero variety it's another orange carrot and then we've got the Scarlet Nantes which is a really popular
OP variety, this one does really well.
This is a great carrot to grow if you want to put up some carrots the roots or the carrots are pretty uniform
And this makes a great one to freeze
or put up and store.
As far as the yellow ones go we've got this Yellowstone carrot which I've been growing for many years
Really really good when this one makes huge huge carrots
And they do really well really strong tops on these you could pull them out of the ground really easily.
Then we've got this new one called Gold Nugget, which I've never grown, but I'm really excited about trying
Supposed to be a really good variety
And this one is another one I've never tried called Black Nebula. Now
It's not a black carrot but they say it's almost so purple it looks black and as I've told you before
Anything that's purple is always good for you. So excited about trying those.
Then we've got another purple one here called Deep Purple
and then this one here called Viper which is a really long and slender carrot now we've got
Pelleted seeds and we've got the raw carrot seeds. I'll show you what the pelleted seeds look like here.
So pelleted carrot seeds are coated with clay
And which makes them a little bigger and also makes them
Kind of easier to handle if you want to plant them with something like our Hoss Garden Seeder
You need to use these pelleted seeds they'll feed through the garden seeder a lot better.
So these pelleted seeds here some of our varieties we only have available in pelleted seeds
Some of them we have raw and pelleted. Some of them just raw seeds you can get the pellet or the raw seeds
Whatever you like. I'm going to be planting a little bit of both today
but just wanted to show you what those pelleted seeds look like there.
So when I'm planting these guys
What I like to do is take me a little bowl or a little dish like this and just dump several
Packets or how much ever seed I think I'll need in this bowl here
It just makes it easier to grab the seed then if I'm reaching down into that packet
so I'll pour all my
Seeds for a particular variety in this bowl here and then I can reach in there and grab a pinch and scatter them out
Along the row. So I've got them a little bowl of seeds here, going to start out with this Viper variety.
I've got my drip tape here, it's buried there and then on each side of that tape
I've got my little furrows here where I'm going to plant my carrots
And what I'll do is I'll just take my seed and I'm just going to kind of liberally
Sprinkle it
Along that row right there. Just want a band of carrot seed here
So I'll get a nice dense stand and then once both of these rows grow up we get some nice foliage
It'll shade out this area here. We won't have to worry about any weeds here
It'll just make a really nice dense row of carrots
You'd be amazed at planting them like this, how many carrots you could get off just a single row.
So we're going to sprinkle these in
We're going to plant all
11 of these rows and then we'll come back and I'll show you how we can really easily with a rake
Cover these or fold these furrows in, pack them down a little bit, and put some water on them.
Alright, so we've got all 11 double rows planted they're
Got our seeds in the furrow
We plant at least one row of all the varieties. I showed you some of the because we were doing 11 rows
We didn't have 11 different varieties, so we've got more than one row of some of the varieties.
Now we just need to cover these guys up.
Now carrots don't need to be planted real deep. So we don't need to throw a lot of dirt on top of these guys
We basically just want to take this dirt here that we used to make this mini furrow and just fold it back over
So that the ground is kind of level there and then we want to pack it down good
Now if you're doing this on a small scale, you could certainly do it by hand
It would take me quite a while to do that for these 11 rows, so I'm going to use my garden rake
We're going to close these furrows pack it in good before we put some water on this plot.
Alright, alright, alright, that's all there is to it.
Got 11 rows of carrots planted there pretty quick and easy, now this is by no means the only way to
successfully plant or grow carrots
But if you've had trouble growing carrots in the past try it this way
and I promise ya you'll have really good results
You don't have to do it on this big of a scale
You can do one row like this or 1/2 a row like this, but try the double rows on the drip tape
And I promise you it'll work out really well for you
Keep that seed bed moist and don't try to grow them in an area where you have a really high weed pressure.
So on this plot right here
What I'll do is I'll get my overhead sprinkler and I'm gonna go ahead and run it for about an hour
or so to get this nice and wet then I'll use my drip tape probably tomorrow
Keep it nice and moist
Supposed to have some rain coming in the next few days and that will help too
If you can schedule your carrot planting before a rain
That's always a good thing to get that seed bed nice and moist to get some good
Even germination. If you have any other questions about growing carrots or planting carrots
Put those in the comments below and I'll be glad to answer them for you
I'll also put some
links in the
Description below to our carrot varieties and our drip irrigation kit so you can check those out. If you enjoyed this video
Give us a big like or a big thumbs up and we will see you guys on the next video.