Soil for carrot bed

**marathon** · 17-03-2009, 01:27 PM

I've always used sharp sand

**oldie** · 17-03-2009, 04:41 PM

Sharp sand is what you use. Leaf mould is good if you have any and yes blood fish and bone meal is fine. Wood ash is supposed to be helpful. I put newspaper in the bottom of my bed and I did get a few bent carrots where it had not decomposed. My bed is the same size as yours and if my memory is right I used roughly one third sharp sand mixed with 2 or 3 buckets of coir and a couple of handfuls blood, bone and fish meal well mixed up with the topsoil.

**Snadger** · 17-03-2009, 07:47 PM

We use stuff called rootzone at work. This is pre-mixed to requirements i.e 70% soil 30% sand or 80/20 or you can get 50/50 if you so wish!

**Stacey Steve** · 18-03-2009, 08:31 AM

My feeble attempts at carrots last year got me wondering, they looked more like ginger in shape. So I'm trying to grow them in car tyre towers this years. I have sifted all the soil so there shouldn't be stones in the mix and hopefully there should be enough depth for the roots.

Am trying Purple Haze and Nantes. I don't want great big carrots as I don't like the taste they get but nice small ones about 4" I love when they are roasted.

**rob the roller** · 18-03-2009, 06:09 PM

I bought some bags of what was described as lime free sharp sand at a builders merchant. However when I got it home there was nothing on the bag to say what it was. Is there any way of testing whether sand contains lime?

**King Carrot** · 18-03-2009, 08:50 PM

I use builders sand at 1 to 4 compost/soil and grow great carrots in it - I really don't think the lime (I suspect most would wash out where the sand is stored anyway) is a problem as most veggies like a bit of it in the soil.

**rob the roller** · 22-03-2009, 01:22 PM

Thanks King Carrot, I will give it a try.

Rob

**gojiberry** · 22-03-2009, 05:30 PM

Last year I did a raised carrot bed and used 100% GP compost. Carrots grew well and came out nice and clean.

Ian

**King Carrot** · 22-03-2009, 09:30 PM

As I've got really stony heavy soil (very healthy though) what I actually do is use a flat spade to make a V trench perhaps 1 -2 inches at the soil surface and around 7 - 8 inches deep. Any stones are pushed out of the way and I then fill the V with the compost\sand mix and after gently packing it down with a blunt tool I push a bamboo cane lenght ways to make a U into which I water and then place the carrot seeds. I then cover the sowed seeds with a layer of compost - job done, works for me

**ricwiley** · 22-03-2009, 11:02 PM

Originally posted by Stacey Steve View Post

My feeble attempts at carrots last year got me wondering, they looked more like ginger in shape. So I'm trying to grow them in car tyre towers this years. I have sifted all the soil so there shouldn't be stones in the mix and hopefully there should be enough depth for the roots.

Am trying Purple Haze and Nantes. I don't want great big carrots as I don't like the taste they get but nice small ones about 4" I love when they are roasted.

When I mentioned I was thinking of growing potatoes in car tyre towers to a consultant from Garden Organic they told me it is not recommended as contaminants could leech out of the tyres.

Cheers

**snohare** · 22-03-2009, 11:57 PM

Yep, cadmium, plasticisers, all sorts. SEPA and such like authorities were finding so many contaminants from minute particles of car tyres being washed off the road into watercourses, that they insisted that all the roadside drainage be soakaways in the future. (Thus reducing movement of said particles into major waterways after heavy rain.)
I'm guessing that as long as your newspaper is not too thick (ie more than one entire newspaper thick) and you have a decent worm population, it will have rotted away almost completely by the time you are ready to harvest, Krok. I put newspapers at the bottom of all my raised beds before I fill them, and although they stop the rhizomes coming up, they certainly never stop the roots going down through them ! Worms love newspaper.
I'm going to try some wood ash on my carrots bed this year, I don't know if that is the best fertiliser though...

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Soil for carrot bed

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