It's always a good moment when the long carrots have gone in but it is a lot of hard work and tonight my stomach muscles are letting me know about it. Rain showers meant I was consigned to the garage doing the mixes for most of the afternoon and boring the holes in between them.
Today I only managed to get the holes bored and filled in this raised bed but the mixes are done for three drums that I shall complete during the week. I got 22 holes bored in this bed, doing all the holes first and then going over them again to tidy up any distortions, then filling them with the mix very quickly by using a funnel to trickle it into the holes, slowly at first to ensure no air blocks.
A little tip I picked up from the Ian Simpson talk in February was to put small sections of plastic drain pipe over each bore hole. These serve a couple of purposes....firstly to water into so that the water gets to the bore holes rather than just wetting the sand surrounding them. I think my badly forked roots last season were simply down to not giving the carrots enough water. The second benefit from using these is that you can top up with compost later in the season to avoid greening of the shoulder. A good long carrot tends not to push up out of the compost and if it does it means the root is probably forked, but greening can occur when sand gets washed away from the crown during watering.
With the Millenium class at the National in mind I wanted to get some stump carrots on the go. With 21 weeks to go I was concerned that Sweet Candle would not stump up in time and besides Ian Simpson reckons the colour on Sweet C looks better in the September shows, especially if there is a late burst of fine weather into September.
I'm always looking to try new ideas so I decided to try sowing some carrots in these 18" pipes. I've had these knocking about since I used to grow some parsnips in them for a local show where the judge seemed to prefer squat roots with huge shoulders. I filled them with a mix of 3/4 sieved compost and 1/4 fine vermiculite with added Tev04 and calcified seaweed and just set them on the border soil in one of my greenhouses. I've sown three sets of seeds into each one. The variety is a trial carrot I've been sent called Caradec F1 which looks similar to Gringo and which should grow to about an inch diameter in parallel form, so I don't think growing three roots in each one should be a problem. If it doesn't work out there's nothing lost as they're taking up no room in the greenhouse. I shall wrap some silver foil around the black pipes which will absorb a lot of heat....ok for now but when it gets really hot the roots will likely twist towards the sides and be all shapes.
3 comments:
So you spent a rainy afternoon.....alone.....in the garage.....and now your stomach muscles are aching.
Does your right forearm look like Popeye's too ?
Seriously don't agree with the collars apart from stumps.
Surely this'll just keep the top foot or so moist.
I thought the idea of using sand was to water this and enable it to slowly drain through it to moisten the borehole right to the bottom ?
We'll see in September when you are cradling your giant orange Octupus..
I'll just water once,possibly twice a week once they're up and running, straight into the collar.
My compost was obviously far too dry last year, hence the octopus roots. I agree carrots need free draining growing media, but they do need some water and I simply cannot have given them enough. This should stop that scenario occurring again.
Looking at Darren's blog, it looks like he's using a similar system.
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