Trevor F1 carrots

[Gordonmull]

Hi folks

The seed instructions say to sow Feb to Mar. Am I too early, considering my location? (Grangemouth, near Falkirk and Edinburgh, for those not familiar with Scottish geography).

At the moment soil is wet, on heavy clay that I'm reconditioning from a lawn.  I've incorporated compost to break it up. We have a dry week forecast this week, so fingers crossed!

I'm planning to cloche using plastic fizzy drinks bottles.

[Gordonmull]

[realfood]

Yes, it is far, far too early!! I am in Glasgow and I will not sow outside till late April or May.

[delboy]

Trevor F1 is a commercially grown variety.

Down here in Surrey I have 2500 pelleted seeds of Trevor, but even here I won't be sowing them until mid March at the very earliest.

[Digeroo]

I am a mega user of plastic bottle cloches.  I do not know why but I have never had much success with carrots in them.  I find fleece more effective for carrots.  You might try a few in a bucket which you can keep inside and put outside on nice days.  

There has been mention before of testing the soil temperature with a bare bum. ;D

If your clay is very wet and hard I would be tempted to put in the spade and make a small carrots shaped channel and fill it with potting compost.

What about covering your soil with plastic to dry it out and warm it up.

[Gordonmull]

Hmmm. Too early for me then!

Realfood - do you use fleece or plastic or do you just wait for things to warm up natuarally?

OK fleece it will be for carrot frost protection then. Was hoping to avoid spending another tenner. Still at least it'll do for a couple of years. Does anyone know how cold fleece is good down to?

I was tempted to try to use plastic to warm the soil, but thought it would prevent water evaporating?

I've got access to free compost from the civic amenity centre so I've been extensively incorporating this into the clay to break it up. Time will tell if it's been enough, but maybe for this year, yeah, a potting compost channel might be the way to go.

[Digeroo]

They do very nice fleece in 99p shop

[Gordonmull]

Right, I tried the compost channel but it seems I'm going to need a fair bit of compost for the amount I want to grow and I'm trying to do this on the ultra-cheap! I just decided to sow the carrots straight into the ground and live with the forks.

However, today I clapped eyes on the shaft of my broken digging fork. It's about carrot-width and still has a good 2' of wood on it. Would it be a bad idea to sharpen the end and use it like an oversized dibber to make carrot-width holes in the ground, fill with compost and sow a few seeds at the top?

[saddad]

You might get a problem with wireworm... having just converted from grass...  :-X

[Gordonmull]

Hmmm. I didn't see any wireworm when digging over, and I've done that twice now - once to bury the turf and another time to dig in compost. Never seen an adult around in this garden although I've seen them elsewhere without knowing what they are. Still, you've got me paranoid!. Would it be worth a preventative nematode treatment? I want to be cheap but I want edible and storable vegetables too!