How to properly prepare the soil and plant carrots?

Every housewife has a carrot in her kitchen. Throughout the year it is used to prepare a variety of dishes and added to salads. This root vegetable is inexpensive, but it is much more convenient to use your own harvest, which was collected in the garden. How to plant correctly carrotto collect quality fruits.

Content:

• When to plant carrots?
• How to prepare soil and seeds?
• Rules for planting and care

When to plant carrots?

Initially, you should purchase carrot seeds. To do this, a person needs to decide which variety will be grown. If you want to enjoy the fruits already in the summer, then it is recommended to purchase early carrots. For winter storage it is better to plant late varieties.

Sowing time is related to when the crop ripens. Namely:

• Early varieties are sown before winter, as well as at the end of April.
• Mid-season carrots planted in the beginning of May
• Late varieties are planted in mid-June.

If you grow carrots correctly, then the late varieties will ripen before mid-autumn. Experienced gardeners plant at different times. If you plant the root crop before winter, then you can enjoy crunchy and tasty vegetables throughout the summer. Often, planting in spring and summer is carried out to prepare crops for the winter.

How to prepare soil and seeds?

Before planting carrots, you should decide where it will be grown.To do this, it is worth considering what garden crops grew in the garden before. You also need to choose a place that is well lit by the sun. It is allowed to plant carrots in those beds where the following vegetables were previously grown:

• Potato
• cucumbers
• Cabbage
• Tomatoes
• Bow and garlic
• Various greens

Carrots grow well on loamy or sandy soil. It should have a sufficient level of humus, and the acidity should be neutral. If you plant a root crop in acidic soil, then the risk of various diseases increases. And this will affect the quality of the future harvest.

Initially, it is worth preparing the land for planting. It needs to be dug up. It is recommended to carry out this manipulation in the autumn, since carrots develop much better on settled soil. Experienced gardeners add humus, and in the spring they no longer dig up the soil again.

2 weeks before you plan to plant the seeds, you should add mineral fertilizers to the soil. There are some soil requirements during sowing. It should be dry and loose. Otherwise, the harvest will not be marketable. Not only the soil needs preparation, but also the seeds. To do this, you should carry out the following manipulations:

1. The seed material has a hard shell. For this reason, their germination will not occur quickly. To speed up this process, before planting, the seeds are soaked in warm water for 2 hours.
2. The seed material is placed on a moistened cotton cloth and covered with the same cloth on top. The seeds should lie in this form until they swell.
3. It is worth systematically mixing the seed and ensuring that the fabric is damp.
4. After seeds swell, they are placed in the refrigerator for 10 days. In this method, hardening occurs.

Rules for planting and care

After germination and hardening, you can begin planting. To do this, grooves are made at the selected location. Their depth is about 3 cm. There should be about 20 cm between them. After this, water is poured into the grooves made and the seeds are placed. Everything is covered with loose soil and compacted. After this, watering is carried out.

To make sprouts appear faster, experienced gardeners cover the plantings with polyethylene film. It should be at a height of 15 cm above the ground. When the first shoots begin to emerge, the film is removed. The seed material is quite small, so gardeners use their imagination and come up with original planting methods. Many of them are often used today. Here are some of them:

The seeds are laid on river sand. Sometimes it is replaced with semolina. All this is mixed and poured into the grooves made. The seeds are attached to toilet paper so that there is a distance of 5-6 cm between them. After this, a paper ribbon is placed in the grooves and covered soil.

Many gardeners are inclined to the simplest method. They simply pour seed material into the grooves. But after the shoots appear, thinning will have to be done. It is recommended to highlight the seed bed by planting radishes along its edges, as they will appear much faster than carrots.

Experienced gardeners also advise planting onions nearby, as they release special substances that repel carrot flies.

Carrots are a root vegetable that needs fairly moist soil. The soil should be loosened and weeded regularly.To retain moisture on the ground, it is recommended to lay straw or leaves nearby. Mulching should be done when the first leaves appear on the plant. If the seedlings appear too close to each other, they are thinned out.

When 20 days have passed after the emergence of a young plant, it is worth feeding. To do this, mix the following ingredients:

• 5 grams of superphosphate
• 3 grams potassium sulfate
• urea

A ten-liter bucket filled with water will require 1 tbsp. l. spoon of this mixture. Second feeding carried out after 15 days using a nitrophoska solution. If you follow these simple rules, you can grow an excellent harvest. So, carrots are planted in almost every garden. But not everyone gets a good harvest. To collect high-quality fruits, you should know how to plant seeds correctly and care for the plant. If everything is done correctly, then a delicious carrot will grow.

Video about growing carrots in open ground: