The Marigold Potager – A Zone 3 Prairie Garden

I posted this picture of my carrots the other day and got so many questions about how to grow good, long carrots. Even afterwards, as I talked with friends, growing nice carrots are the number one thing on everyone’s mind.

How to grow big, long carrots and beets is probably one of the most asked questions I have been asked over the years. I also see this question asked repetitively on fb gardening pages. It seems that getting them to size up properly is the main issue. Many are getting small stubby carrots, wee spindly ones, or carrots with great tops but small bottoms. Here are some of the key things you need to know to grow really great tasting, long, straight, lovely carrots.

All of these carrots in the pics are from my gardens… If I can do this, you can too, I promise!

Step 1 – Choosing The Right Variety

This one is the key. To grow the big, long, nicely tapered carrots that are anywhere from 8 to 12 inches long, you need to buy the correct variety of seeds – imperator carrots.

It can be overwhelming when you start looking at all the carrot seed selections at the greenhouse, or on line, there are so many to choose from. They all sound so good on line, too.

If your goal is the really long tapered carrots, you want an imperator type carrot.

There are four main types of carrots. I grown them all, and love them all for different reasons.

Imperator

This carrot has a regal sounding name, and looks so fab, too! These are the ones that you will find on the grocery store shelves as they are great storage carrots, easy to bundle, and have a higher sugar content to make them taste so yummy.

They have good, strong foliage, with roots that are long and slender, tapering to a pointy tip. If you want long carrots, you need to grow these carrots.

To grow imperators, you need good, deep, friable soil, as they will happily grow 10 to 12 inches long in the right conditions. If you have a raised bed, you want it to be at least 12 inches deep. If you have an in-ground garden, make sure the soil is friable (crumbly, not hard packed). If you are also a no-dig gardener, the best way to achieve friable soil is to top with organic matter once or twice a year so that the soil life loosens up the soil. You can also stick a garden fork down into the bed, not turning the soil, but just giving the garden fork a bit of a lift upwards, to break up the hard soil.

I love growing these great big, long, straight carrots! I feel so accomplished when I lift these babies out of the ground.

The package does not always say imperator on it, so look at the pictures on the package for tapered tips, and read the back for the size of the carrots. Some popular names are Imperator 58, Tendersweet, Tenderlong, St Valery, King Midas, Sugar Snax.

These past two year, I have grown Triton imperator carrots with fantastic results. I also love Renee’s Garden Seeds, where you will find King Midas.

Many of the coloured carrots, the purples, reds, and yellows are imperator types. My dogs are carrot snobs so will turn up their noses at yellow, white, or purple carrots, but reds seems to be acceptable. I love Atomic Red and Kyoto Red.

Danvers

Danvers types are cone shaped heirloom carrots with pointy tips. They are great for new gardeners, and gardeners with less than ideal soil. If you have rocky or heavy soil, these are the carrots for you. They are sweet and easy to grow. No, they will never be long like the imperators, but they will grow great tasting, sweet carrots.

This carrot is longer than the Chantenay but has a similar cone shape, with good wide shoulders that taper down to a pointy end. Fantastic for fresh eating, canning, freezing. Stores really well.

Danvers Half Long and Danvers 126 are both heirloom varieties from the 1870’s. Danvers Half Longs mature quicker than regulars, hence the half long moniker.

Nantes types are probably the most often grown type by home gardeners. Easy to grow, tolerant of poor soils, stores and grows well. Tend to be 6 to 7 inches long.

So many carrots fall into the Nantes category. Bolero, Scarlet, Napa, Yaya, Touchon, Purple Dragon, Cosmic Purple.  

My brother, a brand new gardener, grew Touchon this past summer with great results. He was very happy and proud. They were about 7 inches long, straight, and very sweet.

Chantenay – This heirloom type is my absolute personal fave. I simply love the shape and flavour. No need to peel, just pick, rinse, and eat!

Chantenays are short and stubby, very wide at the top, tapering to a rounded blunt end. They have great strong foliage (perfect bunny food ;)

The Red Cored Chantenay is an heirloom from the early 1900’s, great for fresh eating and juicing, and I love them best for roasting.

Great for growing in heavy soil or containers.

Miniatures – Round & Baby Carrots

Round or Ball carrots are a very popular market variety in France. Eat them fresh, no need to peel, or lightly steamed. Great for poor rocky soils, pots, container gardens, or shallow garden beds.

They’re often called Parisienne, Paris Market, or French Round.

Baby Carrots are not actually a type of carrot, just carrots that are harvested young. Some varieties of carrots were bred to be fast growing and picked when small and young, like Little Fingers or Babette.

Step 2 – Soil Prep

Soil Prep is everything. Loose and friable soil – For long, straight carrot, your soil needs to be well-draining, loose and crumbly to a depth of at least 10 inches. You should be able to easily to push your fingers into the soil without meeting much resistance, no rocks or hard clumps.

Here on the prairies, we tend to have heavy clay soil, makes it difficult for the carrot to grow through. The answer to amazing loose and friable soil is to feed your soil with organic matter once or twice a year.

On the island, the soil is very sandy or filled with fillers, like wood chips, and low in nutrients. The answer to that soil is also adding lots of organic matter.

The answer is always organic matter. Feeding soil with organic matter feeds the soil-life (organisms, fungi, bacteria, worms…) that make your soil better. The soil-life breaks down that matter to give you lovely, loose, nutrient rich soil for healthy thriving plants. I feed my garden in fall, after harvest and garden clean up, but some prefer to add a bit in fall and then add more in spring.

If you are having a hard time growing great crops of any kind, I highly recommend adding even more organic matter to your beds, copious amounts thereof. This will really increase the soil-life and the activity in your soil, which in turn improves the health and production of your plants. Organic matter is anything that breaks down naturally to feed your soil, like leaves, leaf mould, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, but the easiest to apply in large amounts is compost or manure.

Organic Amendments to Consider

Carrots prefer a soil that is neutral to slightly alkaline, though will grow just fine if it is a bit off in either direction, alkaline or acidic. We tend to have slightly alkaline soil here on the prairies, while the west coast tends to be a bit acidic. Both are just fine for growing great fruits and vegetables.

On the west coast – It used to be common practice for gardeners to lime the garden beds annually, and some gardeners still do this. I am not a big fan of mucking about with pH, as going too far either way can really wreak havoc on your garden and be very difficult to fix.

However, if you are having a really tough time with your carrots (beets and asparagus) and feel that you have good soil with everything else is growing really nicely, then adding a bit dolomitic lime to raise the pH level is a fine idea. Apply in the fall so that the lime has time to sweeten the pH of the soil for planting time in spring.

Lime also adds calcium and magnesium to the soil, both of which are great for growing amazing tomatoes and peppers, though not potatoes! Follow the directions on the bag for the correct amount to apply. Please do not do this on the prairies where our soil is alkaline already.

Organic Matter – In addition, if you find that things are not growing as you like, before changing anything else or adding other amendments, first try adding organic matter of a different sort, or from a different source than you usually use.

Manure – To feed my soil in fall, I add an inch/two of composted chicken manure on top of the beds. Chicken manure is a well balanced, relatively inexpensive, weed-free, soil conditioner. It is my top pick, with steer or mushroom coming in as next best.

Adding a different manure on other years introduces new soil conditioners, and thus new soil life, to your garden beds. Switch it up from time to time to really make your soil life happy.

Compost- Sometimes to switch it up, we use a fish compost (such as SeaSoil) instead. This introduces new life to the soil, different micro-organisms, fungi, and bacteria. Any kind of compost is a fantastic amendment and soil conditioner, fish, green bin program, or homemade.

Introducing new conditioners, and new soil life, to your garden beds annually … as Martha would say, it’s a good thing.

Step 3 -How to Sow

Here on the prairies, I sow carrots twice a year.

• In spring, I start in May but we can sow right up till early August. The later in the summer, the smaller/shorter they will be when we harvest in late October/early November.
• I sow another batch again in October or November, trying to sow just shortly before first hard frost. This gives me bigger carrots earlier the following summer.

On the west coast, I sowed three times a year.

• Spring (May). Can sow through till July.
• First week of July (no later!) Sowing in August will give you small, hairy carrots.
• Right around winter solstice (late December). These winter sown carrots will be huge by July.

As a general guideline that works anywhere, you want to sow 40 to 90 days before you want to begin harvesting.

Warmer soil will give you faster germination and longer, bigger, better tasting carrots. Beginning your spring sowing when night time temps are around 10°C (50°F) is ideal.

How to Sow –

• make shallow trenches 1/2 inch deep that are 6 to 8 inches apart.
• Sow the seeds 1/2 inch apart and cover the seeds with soil.
• Lay the handle of a rake across the bed to keep the rows straight, use a small hand held hoe to make the furrows, sow seeds, cover.
• Tamp the soil down to firm the seeds in place or they may end up floating around when you water (especially if you are sowing in mid-summer, when soil sometimes becomes hydrophobic – repels water).

Carrots can also be sown in blocks, with the seeds scattered over the ground like chicken feed. Cover with a half inch of soil. I tend to prefer rows as it is easier to keep weed free. Anything outside the row is a weed, just run your hoe between the rows.

Thinning seeds– Once your carrots tops are an inch tall, you may need to do some thinning. Your carrots will be small, will not have room to size up if they are too close together. Thin them out so they are 2 inches apart from each other.

I try to never thin mine. I try my best to sow the seeds an inch apart so that I do not have to. For one thing, it is an onerous job, no fun at all, hah! For another, each time you disturb the carrot foliage, you run the risk of attracting carrot rust flies. As the summer goes along, I start by harvesting carrots growing too close another carrot, leaving the others with looser soil to grow bigger in.

If you feel like you have to thin them out while they are little, water the soil first, let it sink in deep. Now when you pull out the carrots, they will come out easily rather than breaking the root and attracting those horrible rust flies.

Step 4 – How To Grow

Sunlight & Water- For big, sweet tasting carrots, you want a minimum of 6 to 8 hours of sunshine per day. The more the merrier.

When you first sow your carrot seeds, you will be watering daily, perhaps even twice daily to keep the soil moist. Carrots (and parsnips) take anywhere from 5 to 21 days to germinate and must be kept moist until you see the greens popping through the soil. If they dry out at any time during the germination process, the seeds will die; they will not recover if you start watering them again. They germinate faster in nice, warm soil.

• Sow the seeds, water thoroughly with a watering wand until the soil is damp well below the seeds.
• Covering them with burlap sacks helps the soil stay damp longer. Water the sacks down really well after sowing, and daily thereafter. I lift the sacks to make sure that the water is indeed going through and soaking the bed. If you do not have burlap sacks, you can use sheets of burlap, or even wood planks.
• After a week, begin to check for signs of germination, remove the sacks when you see green popping through the soil. The rest will soon follow.
• If you are sowing in summer time when you soil is so dry that water beads up on top, water the furrows before you sow, then water again as above.

After the carrots have germinated and you can see the wee green tops, slow down the watering to one or two deep soaks a week.

Over-watering may result in small carrots, carrots that split down the middle, or hairy carrots that do not taste great. Carrots want sunny beds, rich, loose soil, and a good, deep watering once a week.

I use weeping hoses in my beds to deep soak the beds about every 5 to 7 days. You can do the same with drip tube systems.

Deep, slow watering less often will always give you better crops than hand watering with a wand or can. If you have to do your watering by hand, it is going to take you a really long time to get that water down deep enough to make nice, big, long carrots. Use many cans of water per row. Shallow watering will stress out the plants, resulting in small carrots that are less sweet, and may be woody.

Pest Control

The only real problem we tend to face with carrots is the dreaded Carrot Rust Fly. This fly will lay its eggs at the base of the carrot, the larvae will soon emerge from the eggs to begin feeding on your carrots, leaving ugly black trails and holes throughout the roots. These flies can be present from spring till frost so can attack your crop at any time during the growing season.

To organically prevent this damage, there are a few things that you can do…

As it is a fly, you cannot spray against it or pick them off. The best and most effective way to prevent damage from these guys is to net your crops.

Bug mesh/insect netting works best because it breathes, water goes through it, sunshine goes through it, but the mesh is so tight that the flies cannot get in to lay their eggs. Lightweight white garden fleece would work but it holds in heat so often causes drying out and smaller carrots.

Make sure to pin it down well on the sides. Just laying the fleece or mesh over top of the bed will not work, the flies will crawl underneath if they find any sort of access.

Companion planting with strong scented flowers, veggies, or herbs will mask the scent of the carrots to confuse the flies. Plant onions or garlic beside your carrots. Leeks, rosemary, chives, sage are all great companions.

Calendula and marigolds are strongly scented flowers, or plant honey scented sweet alyssum.

Crop rotation and weed control – Practice crop rotation to help prevent issues from arising or building up in the soil. Keep your bed well weeded and hoe through the top centimeter or two of soil in spring to uproot grubs, bugs, eggs for the birds to eat.

Step 5 -Storage

In cold zones where your ground freezes – Leave them in the garden till you have had a few good frosts to sweeten them up. Lift, remove the green tops, wash and dry really well, place in a plastic bag with a paper towel or two. Place them in the extra fridge crisper drawer to use as needed. Check on them once/twice a month and replace with fresh paper towels.

In temperate zones – Leave them in the garden and harvest as needed. Try to use them all up before spring the following year or they will begin to get hairy, then woody, and then flower to make seeds.

Other carrot information worthy of note…

Containers -If you have poor or really heavy soil, carrots can easily be grown in pots. Just add some compost or manure to your potting soil for nutrients and they will grow really well.

Trench Amending – If you have really hard packed soil, dig a trench, fill the trench with sifted black earth and compost, sow your seeds into that trench for nice straight carrots.

Nitrogen – If you are getting carrots that are all twisted up, you likely have too much nitrogen in your soil or have been using a lot of manure. Compost tends to be a better amendment for carrots than manure.

Flowering – If you have left your carrots in the garden all winter, in spring you will soon find a flowering plant that looks a bit like Queen Anne’s Lace. That is the carrot flower. The carrot root turns into the root system and the greens begin to make flowers, those flowers turn into seeds. To harvest them … cut and place into a paper bag… shake.

Carrots are one of the must haves in my garden. We eat a lot of carrots ourselves, either fresh or roasted, and I always grow them for our dogs. We have never yet had a dog who did not come running when we offer up carrots. They eat them raw and also grated into their food, either cooked or raw. According to Rodney Habib from Pet Planet, adding colourful vegetables to your pets diet cuts back on their chances of getting cancer by 60%. Easy to do and good for them.

I am not a fan of white or yellow carrots, though I like the reds and purples. Orange carrots are good for everything but taste great raw, while I think the reds and purples are a bit less sweet, and zingier? Spicier? so I like them best roasted with some olive oil and and Himalayan pink salt.

We used to grow 300 to 600 carrots a year but now that we have a smaller potager and have to store the extras indoors instead of just leaving them in the garden in winter (as one does on the west coast), we cut back to about 200. That proved to not be quite enough (I eat a lot of carrots), so back to growing 300 or 400 next year.

Find your happy medium, but, hey… don’t forget to eat them in summertime, too! I find sometimes people start growing things and then forget to harvest them until autumn comes.

Happy Growing of Really Great Carrots ~ Tanja