Planting Carrot Seeds

[Durgan]

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?GSXVO 22 May 2010 Planting Carrot Seeds
The type of carrot is Chantenay Red.
Carrot seeds require constant moisture and cool temperatures (Less than 80F or 27C) to germinate. The top layer of soil on a bright sunny day can exceed this temperature. Top soil Germination takes from about 11 to 22 days. Thinning carrot seedlings is not a pleasant chore and is very inefficient, since one is often pulling the desired more vigorous plant.

By enclosing the seed in s small piece of toilet paper and wetting, the seed is enclosed in a wet environment, and spacing is much easier to achieve. Adding the softwood bedding wood chips will prevent the soil surface from drying and getting excessively hot when the Sun is bearing down. I will be posting a follow-up on this method as to efficacy as time progresses.

[Big Al]

looking at the photo's, am I correct in assuming you wrapped each carrot seed in a bit of bog roll and then planted these in the ground ? If so it must have been a rather more tedious job than pulling up a few extra planted seeds when thining out. Secondly I was always told that by adding wood shavings / sawdust etc robbed the ground of nitrogen as this is used to help break down the wood.

For me a better way would either use one of the proprietary braned tapes that ome with the seeds already on, ready to plant out or maybe even use a bag of walpaper paste and cut the corner off the bag to squirt the seeds and paste into the chosen row.

. Just as thought.

BA