Tuesday, March 15, 2011

The Great Carrot Caper Continued.....

The last time I posted about my carrot experiment was on February 14. I thought it was time for an update. My idea was to go against conventional garden wisdom, which says that carrots should be direct sown into the garden, and try starting the seed in the greenhouse with the aid of a warm soil germination mat.  I planted seeds into 120 mini soil blocks....

 

By the middle of March the carrots had sprouted and the soil blocks looked like this...


My thought was to get the seedlings into the ground as soon as they germinated so there would be very little root development to be affected by transplanting...in this photo you can see that there are no roots showing on the sides or bottoms of the blocks...

 

I made small depressions in the soil in the garden bed in front of the previously planted peas and placed a soil block in each one...


...and gently moved soil to cover the exposed sides of the blocks...

 

I made a change to the raised bed later after reading  posts By Robin (The Gardener of Eden) and Carol (Annie's Kitchen Garden) about using rope lights....


The temperature of the soil in one of my raised beds without the rope light is 46 degrees... the soil under the carrots is a toasty 54 degrees....from the amount that they have grown I'm guessing they are pretty happy about our little experiment...I know I am!!

Enjoy!



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3 comments:

  1. RobinMarch 15, 2011 at 2:30 PM

    It looks like your carrot experiment is working well. I'm happy to see that rope lights are working well for you too. The ropes lights have been on all winter in the cold frames and the ground never froze. I was just wondering today when I should turn them off.

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  2. kitsapFGMarch 16, 2011 at 6:15 AM

    Excellent! The soil blocks seem lika a perfect candidate for items like this - that need to have minimal root disruption. I may give this a try next year myself to get a jump on the carrots in spring.

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  3. DebMarch 16, 2011 at 3:10 PM

    Robin, I'm sold on the rope light for warming the soil surface and will install some in the rest of my beds before next winter...Thanks for the idea!

    Laura, I think you will find the soil blockers very much worth the investment...there is a slight learning curve...you are welcome to come and try mine out any time...I'm off Hwy 3 about half way between Allyn and Shelton...about 45 minutes?

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