Growing carrots

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1 Culture of Carrots
2 Detailed Carrot Growing Instructions Guide
3 Soil for Growing Carrots
4 Carrot Fly

Culture of Carrots

Carrots do best in rather light, well-worked loam. Certain sandy spots that are not too dry produce the very best results. To do them justice they should be divided into two sections the Short Horn and the Early Market, for early crops, and the Chantenay, Oxheart and Nantes varieties for main crop. Few roots are forced with less trouble, and certainly small sweet Carrots in the early summer afford a welcome dish. For early use, sow seed in rows fifteen inches apart as early in the spring as the ground can be worked, sowing four to five pounds per acre, and cover same with one-half inch of soil. For main crop, sow about corn-planting time, using three pounds of seed per acre, and the seed should be covered with about one inch of soil. One ounce of seed will sow one hundred feet of drill. Make the rows two feet part, to allow for horse cultivation. Keep free from weeds and cultivate occasionally until the roots are large enough for table use. If grown for commercial purposes, they may be cultivated with profit throughout the season. When plants are three inches high, thin to three inches apart in the row.

Detailed Carrot Growing Instructions Guide

The culture of the carrot is practically the same as the parsnip, except that carrots are not thinned so much and are allowed to grow almost as thickly as planted. Carrots should be dug in the autumn and stored the same as parsnips or turnips. Any surplus can be fed sparingly to horses, mules or cattle.

The roots of the carrot are used at all times of the year, mostly in soups, but they may be boiled and served with butter or creamed. Carrots are planted in rows 16 inches apart and the plants thinned out to 4 inches in the row.

Soil for Growing Carrots

Carrots prefer a rich loam and grows very well on a heavy clay which is not to wet, but a light sandy soil is not well adapted to it. For fertilizer, stable manure will do when nothing else is available, but a commercial fertilizer, rich in potash and phosphoric acid, is much to be preferred for this crop.

Carrot Fly

Q. Please say what worm this is attacking my carrots. Some of the roots are a rusty brown colour, while others are rotten?

A. The worm is the larva or maggot of the Carrot fly. The fly does not, as a rule, attack them until the end of May. The flies appear in spring, and when the Carrot roots are well established the flies lay their eggs on them just below the ground. When full fed the maggots leave the roots for pupation in the soil ; the pupa case is light brown in colour, horny, and striated. There are several generations during the summer, but it is a remarkable fact that Carrots sown after the middle of July are seldom attacked, and good, useful Carrots are obtained by sowing about that time, say after early Potatoes. The freeing of the ground from pupae by dressing with gas lime in winter is an old fashioned preventive, but as the fly infests other umbelliferous plants the thing is to keep a sharp look out for the flies, and when they are seen about or on the Carrot plants, spray these with a solution of paraffin emulsion, 1 part of emulsion to 20 parts of water. This can be put on with a syringe having a spraying nozzle. To act preventively, spray the Carrot bed, after sowing, with the paraffin emulsion ; spray again with it after the plants are well above ground ; and a third time after thin- ning.