Pavel314 wrote:
My wife got some seeds for a Japanese carrot which is supposed to grow two feet long "in the proper soil". So I spent the morning making the soil proper in one of the garden rows. The area is about three feet across and six feet long.

I dug it out to a depth of two feet, hitting red clay about a foot down. The red clay will go in some low spots in the back pasture. I then put some perlite and sand in the bottom of the pit and dug it into the base clay a bit. Next came about a foot of compost, followed by another sprinkling of perlite and sand. Finally, the topsoil which was removed was replaced and raked smooth. A bit of compost on top of that gave her a good bed for the seeds. Seems like a proper carrot bed to me.

Very strenuous work for an old man but good exercise. I'll report back in a few months on the length of the carrots. I hope they appreciate all my efforts.

the few times i've had carrots here they've done ok, but
i also planned on the soil being poor down deep so bought
the short and sweet kind. they did ok, but Mom is now
hooked on baby carrots so she just didn't like the ones i
grew.

as far as soil prep, the compost would need to be fairly
well graded to remove the bigger pieces otherwise you risk
splitting or other odd shapes. mound it slightly to get a
little more elevation and after the carrots have been
growing make sure to keep the tops slightly covered to
avoid them going green.

my body really likes it when i dig as long as i don't do
something stupid and twist my leg or back. so far this
season i've finally managed to clear a large weedy garden
by digging holes and burying what i scrape (using a flat
shovel). if there is grass roots/stolons in there that
i'm worried about growing back up i cover it with newspaper
or cardboard before burying with about a foot or more of
dirt. all of that buried organic material is prime worm
food and also having all those air gaps in there makes it
a great place to collect extra rain when it happens. it
just so happened that yesterday we had a pretty severe
downpour and those buried holes probably soaked up
several hundred gallons of water that would have otherwise
run off that garden.

going to have to weed it again this week, but with a
quick scrape of a strap/stirrup hoe i can do the whole
thing in a few hours now.


songbird