Gardening Carrots In Your Raised Bed

Everyone loves Carrots! And they are a vegetable that is very easy to grow in a backyard raised bed garden from seeds, even for a beginner.
Because they are easy to grow and a superb source of Vitamin A, growing organic carrots is an excellent choice in the backyard home garden. Growing carrots is a great beginners project for kids.

Soils

Carrot plants like deep, loose, well-drained soil. Because you can control your soil in raised-beds, and they receive little compaction from foot traffic, they are an ideal place to grow carrots. A pH range of 6.0 to 6.8 should be maintained for best results.

Choosing your carrot seeds

The variety of carrot seeds you choose is crucial to successfully growing carrots in a raised bed. If your raised bed is 8" high, choose carrots which grow to be about 6 inches long. You do not want your carrots to grow longer than the height of your raised bed! This will make for "ugly" disfigured carrots.

If you want to grow long, straight, slender carrots, you must provide soft, fertile, well-drained soil so they can stretch their root downward. If your soil contains too much clay, your carrots will be short and deformed, and difficult to pull from the ground at harvest time!

The number one requirement of container vegetable gardening is to keep your plants well-watered and fertilized. Thoroughly soak the surface soil as it begins to dry. Good drainage is of utmost importance.

1.  Plant carrot seeds directly into the soil in the raised bed. Use a stick to poke small, shallow holes into the soil about 3 inches apart. Carefully place two carrot seeds in each hole and lightly cover with soil.
2.  Be sure to keep the soil evenly moist as seeds are germinating. As the carrot plants continue to grow, be sure to give them plenty of water. Increase water as your carrots increase in size.
3.  Thin your carrot seedlings to three inches apart once the tops of the carrots get to be about two inches long.
4.  As the carrots continue to grow, continue thinning out to give plants more room to grow. As carrots are pulled and eaten, try to pull every other plant so that more space in left for growing plants.
5.  About 70 days after the plants germinate from seeds, the carrots are ready to be pulled. Harvest Time!
6.  It is okay to sneak-a-peek at the growing carrots.
7.  Push the topsoil away to check the size of your roots.
8.  When finger size, the baby carrots can be thinned and eaten.
9.  Remember, pull every other carrot, so the remaining carrots have plenty of growing room.
10.  Harvest remaining crop when roots are less than 1 ½ inches in diameter. Carrots that get too big are not as tasty.
11.  It's as easy as that to grow carrots in your backyard raised bed vegetable garden!