in today's episode we look at growing two delicious carrot varieties
that you will not find in your grocery store let's look at growing carrots
so let's look at the first variety which is the atomic red carrot
this is one of my favorite carrot varieties to grow
at home and we are sowing our seeds in march
now carrots can be grown either in the spring season
which begins in march in southern California
or in fall which is around September the planting mix that we are using here
is a good blend of peat moss vermiculite and compost and the
vermiculite really helps retain the moisture in the soil
which is very essential for growing carrots especially when they're
young seedlings so all we're doing is marking some holes in the
pot and we're growing this in a whiskey barrel container and we will be just
putting in two or three seeds per hole and then covering up the hole now
carrots have a decent germination rate they're not excellent
so you need to put at least two or three seeds in each planting hole
and then thin them out later that way you will have enough
plants all around your container now this whiskey barrel container is about
21 inches in diameter and can hold a lot of soil
so the whiskey barrel container that we're using here is one of the great
options to grow carrots in containers at home
and while the seeds are germinating you want to make sure that
the plants are nicely watered. And within 13 days of sowing
you will see that the seedlings have emerged they look quite good
and this is a good time to start thinning the seedlings
what you want to do is keep one carrot plant
per planting hole and i know some gardeners find this very difficult
to just kill the seedlings that have already emerged
but you need to do that you need to find the healthiest seedling
in each planting hole and then remove all the other ones
so that you have exactly one plant left Now I'm doing this by hand, just pulling
the seedlings out where they are not needed but you can
also use scissors to just cut the seedling at the base of
the soil and some people prefer that method
because it doesn't damage the carrot seedling. Now remember that
carrot is a cool season crop which is why we grow it in spring and
fall it's not recommended that you grow
carrots in the summer season when it gets too hot
otherwise they go to bold we're using a soaker hose for the drip
emitter for this whiskey barrel container
and there are many emitters that you can use for your containers
and if you want to learn more about drip irrigation and what are the different
types of emitters you can check out the video that i have
created a while ago which explains all the different drip
irrigation methods
Now 21 days since sowing you can see that the seedlings have now become
larger and at 55 days you can see that the
leaves are looking quite good. Now remember that you
do not need to add any fertilizer for growing carrots if you add
fertilizers you're going to get a lot of greens but not
much carrots these carrots can utilize the nutrition from the soil that
they're growing in and at 68 days you can see that the
plants have now become quite large and you want to make sure that you keep
your carrots in full sun they prefer full sun but they will even
grow in partial shade And at 84 days we have started now
harvesting our atomic red carrots as you can see
they are a very beautiful deep red color and these are the kind of carrots that
you can grow at home you generally don't find these in
grocery stores just because it's not profitable for
mass producing or mass farming but you can
see these carrots are beautiful they're organic they're very delicious
and crunchy and kids love harvesting carrots this is
one vegetable that kids go absolutely crazy harvesting so
make sure that you participate in gardening activities with your kids
it's a wonderful thing to do
you can see here my son he's helping me harvest all these
carrots and although he couldn't do a great job of keeping that carrot in
focus in front of the camera i had to help him out a little bit but
he's learning he's enjoying gardening as well
and this is how the carrots look like after they're washed nicely
They are a beautiful deep red color and one of my favorite carrot varieties to grow
excellent very sweet and very delicious and now let's look at our next carrot
variety which again cannot be found in the grocery store
this is the cosmic purple carrot variety so this time we are sowing our seeds in
fall so that it grows through the cool fall
season and then we can harvest it towards the end of
the fall or beginning of winter once again we are using a similar
kind of container the whiskey barrel container
it has a good mix of peat moss compost and vermiculite
and remember that all the nutrition that your carrot plant will get
is from the compost that is present in the container
and all the organic matter and while you can add a mild fertilizer
like fish fertilizer, fish emulsion when you
begin you don't really need to add a lot more
fertilizer to grow carrots now this time we are sowing our seeds
differently we are just scattering our seeds around the container
and this method works well for this carrot variety because it's a finger
sized carrot variety it doesn't grow very large carrot roots
so we're just going to be scattering our seeds and once that's done we're going
to be covering it with some kind of planting medium here we are
using peat moss you could just cover it with potting
soil or anything else you may have now remember that if you don't want to
create your own potting mix for growing carrots you can always use a bagged
potting mix it's just cheaper to create your own
potting mix as opposed to buying bagged potting mixes but it's always a
choice you have now once the seeds are completely
covered with this peat moss and this is a good idea so that the
seeds don't fly away or you know birds don't come and pick out the seeds
you need to water the surface very well and keep it moist till the seeds
germinate and within 28 days you can see that all
the seedlings have emerged now carrots do take time to germinate
and depending on the weather depending on how much sun they
get it might take them longer to germinate
but once they do germinate you can see that we have
a lot of carrot seedlings in the entire container
now at 47 days we will be thinning these a little bit
but you don't have to do it these carrots these finger sized carrots
can grow very close to each other and since we are growing them for home
consumption we really don't care about how they look
like so for the most part thinning a little bit is okay but you
don't need to go overboard with the thinning
now once again the carrots need to be grown in either full sun
or at least partial sun which means they need at least
four hours of sunlight every day and avoid growing carrots in the hot
weather it's best to grow them in spring or the fall season
now as far as insects and diseases go i haven't seen any
pests attacking my carrot plants there is a problem with the carrot fly
in some areas and to prevent carrot flies all you really do is
cover your carrot plants with the netting so that it protects your
carrot plants from the carrot fly now at 83 days since sowing you can see
that the plants are really looking good they are nice bushy and the leaves look
good the plants look good and they're close to harvesting you
would think but this carrot this carrot variety does
take a long time for harvest and at 125 days in sowing you
can see that the plants have kept growing
and are now at a stage where we can start to test if these
carrots are ready for harvest so let's pull out one carrot and see how it looks
like and as you can see the carrots have
matured these are finger sized carrots so
don't expect very large sized carrots and here's one more they look beautiful
look at the nice deep purple color these are extremely nice delicious and fresh
now carrots have different root sizes depending on the variety that you're
growing for example some carrots will have
really large roots and different taste whereas this variety
like the one we are seeing here has shorter roots they're bite-sized
carrots finger-sized carrots and these carrots
taste amazing and because of their smaller size you
usually won't find them in grocery stores
but growing them at home is a joy these are delicious crunchy
and once again very sweet carrots excellent to eat
so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing these two carrot
varieties if you like this video give us a thumbs
up and if you have grown these carrot varieties do let me know in the comments
box below i'll see you again soon happy gardening