It’s always a relief when we see our carrots finally germinate! Since we sow them rather early in the season, it can often take 2 to 3 weeks for them to germinate. The distinctive look of carrot seedlings make them easy to pick out among weeds or other seeds that might try to compete with them.
We grow a ton of different kinds of carrots. Short, long, orange, purple, red, yellow and even multi-colored. The gamut! Having a huge variety of carrots later in the season is certainly among one of the finer things about growing your own.
We generally grow our carrots pretty intensively, densely sown at 16 carrots per square foot. They lend themselves well to intensive planting, allowing a massive amount of production in a relatively small amount of space.
Once we start to see the majority of our carrots germinate, we’ll come back along and sow any locations that appear to be missing carrots, indicating failed germination. It’s very important to thin out carrots that had two or three seeds germinate as multiple carrots growing will harm the overall growth of all of them. We really don’t have all the time in the world with our carrots, they require the entire season to get to maturity, so doing this early in the season is important.
We are looking forward to the bountiful harvest of carrots that will eventually be!
