Carrot Experiment

[Dynamo]

A couple of months ago, I posted in the "What I Did Today" thread about a little experiment that I was doing with my carrots. I planted them in upturned 2 litre plastic milk bottles with the bottoms cut off.



There was a couple of reasons for this. One is that I hoped that the lips around the edge might dissuade any varmints like Carrot Flies from getting at the plants. The main reason though is that my soil is really fine and doesn't hold water at all well and germination is one of my biggest problems, so I hoped that keeping them in a confined area would make it easier to keep moisture with the plants and give them a better chance at starting off. In the row of the bottles there, I also continued to sow the row and the one to the right with carrot seeds to see if it really did make a difference. As you can see from this next pic, it has.



As you can see, there's not a single other carrot in the ordinary soil in the same row as the upturned bottles as far as the picture shows, and they are only spasmodic in the other row too, but the plants in the bottles are thriving. While weeding today, I accidentally pulled a young carrot out of the ground and you can see it in that pic and at how healthy it looks, so I'm hoping that the rest of the plants are the same beneath the ground.

I also planted up some more carrots in bigger plasting bottles a few weeks later and these seem to be doing great as well.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Well done, it shows vegetables can be grown in "thin"ground if cultivation methods are adapted.

[BUFFS]

Well done, it shows vegetables can be grown in "thin"ground if cultivation methods are adapted.

they were originally from that type of soil,in the middle east,but they do grow better for us in good soil,i use my poor soil area to grow alpine strawbs (they love it) as nothing else likes that area,and i pick fruit each week from july to frosts..

[Florence Fennel]

Well done dynamo and thanks for sharing.

[endymion]

That seems like a good idea, and it looks as if you can harvest them easily too by simply digging or pulling up the container and dealing with the contents at home, without arousing the interest of the carrot fly.

[Lotsaveg]

That looks really good! I'm going to try this by cutting the bottom off some old 2 ltr round plantpots and burying them in the ground up to the ridge below the rim. As you've shown, this will enable more concentrated watering.

[Dynamo]

Well here they are folks, fresh out of the ground.



There's one there thats grown a couple of legs, but that was one of three that I'd grown outside of the pots. A couple of weeks ago I harvested some others from straight out of the ground next to the pots and they all had some evidence of carrot fly, but none of the ones out of the pots has any holes in them at all. I'll definately be growing my carrots like this from now on.

[Dynamo]

Update.

I harvested some carrots later on and they were great apart from a bit of carrot fly damage on the tops. This year I'm going to cover the bottles witha mesh cloche to try to keep the bugs off.

Other changes I'm doing include using only shop bought compost in the pots rather than a mix of it and soil, and I'll also cut the handles off the bottles. I'm using fresh compost to try to cut back on the weeds, and I'm cutting the handles off because the plants grew into them and I couldn't get some out.

[Jelliebabe]

This looks great! I'm going to start saving milk containers now! Brill!

[super trowel]

I know its a bit extreme.
But I use those big blue chemical drums people use for water butts.
I cut the bottom quarter off and place it on top.
Drill a load of holes for drainage fill with some good soil, and viola.
All I do is sprinkle the seeds and water.
I have about 4 of these all together.
2 in the tunnel and 2 outside.
Never had any problems with fly and unless the roots touch each other.
The carrots always come out strait

[Dynamo]

I wouldn't say thats extreme at all ST. I know some people who grow their carrots in old baths.

[singleseeder]

If you have plenty of time on your hands, follow the example of an eighty year old on my previous site.

Due to very stony ground in Herts, he sat on the ground and made individual holes with a metal spike, filled them with compost and set a seed in each of them. He would do several rows of these holes and shuffled along on his behind as he did them.

Now that's dedication to carrots.

[Dynamo]

I didn't crop all the carrots from last year but today I went to sort the area out to move the containers and found them to contain some lovely ones, so I cropped them.



I really didn't expect to be harvesting any at this moment in time so this is a real bonus, especially seeing as theres still a load left to crop.

This year I'm going to plant them in bigger tubs though. I've got some big plastic bottles that hold about 10 gallons. I've cut the bottoms off them and turned them upside down to do the same thing.

[veggiechicken]

I do like an experiment - especially when it works