Play4aBuck wrote:

Hi,

I'm thinking about building a small raised garden area about (2' W x 3' L x
12" D) just for carrots and radishes within my larger garden. I get a good
crop of carrots/radishes every year but they are tuff to extract from the
sandy soil. If I fill up the bottom-less box with some good soil mixture
then the carrots should be easier to pick and may grow better. Anyone see a
problem with this? With such a small box will it dry out to quickly? Will
I get pencil-like carrots if the soil if too loose? I may make it larger
and plant my onions in it too. Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Jim




It's not necessary to build a raised bed for carrots and/or radishes.
Carrots will grow in fairly tight soil, although it's best if it isn't
really compacted. (Of course for things you have to bend over to
harvest, the raised bed has some advantages). (You could do the same
thing by building trenches for the walkways.)

I grow a lot of carrots, and to harvest a few I just use a shovel. Place
the shovel about 6" away from the row of carrots with the blade straight
up and down, parallel to the (presumed) direction of the carrot. Just
step on the shovel to drive it in, hold onto the handle and lean back.
This will loosen the soil on one side of the carrot. That's enough to
get the carrot out easily. If you put the blade in at an angle you risk
cutting off the carrot. The same thing applies to radishes (I am
assuming you are growing the long thin radishes or Daikons rather than
the round style).

In addition, I recommend that you grow more carrots than you think you
will need. The carrots will withstand the early frosts in the fall
without any problem. When you rake up your leaves, bury the carrots to a
depth of 2 or 3 feet. Place a shovel at each end of the row so that when
the winter snows come you can find them. The leaves will keep the ground
from freezing and you can dig carrots all winter. Just move the leaves
away and dig, then put the leaves back over the exposed end of the row.
Fresh carrots in January are worth a few minutes of cold hands.

After about March, when the weather starts to warm up again, the carrots
will start to grow again. At this point they are using the sugars they
stored in the root, so they lose their sweetness and aren't worth
digging any more. If allowed to keep growing they will go to seed. So
about the beginning of March, dig up all the remaining carrots, clean
them and place them in plastic bags in the refrigerator. They will keep
there fairly well for a month. Fresh carrots in the winter make good
gifts.

I do this in New England, about zone 5. The ground freezes to a depth of
1-3 feet in the winter, but not where I cover the carrots. For two of us
I cover about 50 feet of carrots. I estimate we eat the carrots from
about 20 feet of that row, but as noted above, they make good gifts.
South of here you may not need quite as much cover for the carrots, and
you may have to dig them all earlier in the season.