My raised beds are built on a patio area which is two foot higher than normal ground level.
Does this mean the carrots will be safe from carrot fly?
I have grown carrots successfully in old baths raised from ground
above 2ft as I had learned the carrot fly cannot fly higher than
this.I grow early nantes first then follow with main sowings of autumn
king which are flavoursome grow well to good size and keep well,we
had fresh carrots every week last year and had the last of them for
christmas dinner (roasted in oven smeared with butter and seasoned
with black pepper foil wrapped ) Yum.We can get a lot of old baths
round here for our carrot crops I have collected loads of mole hills
locally from grass field behind my allotment and mixed with some
grit sand is an ideal soil to fill your baths and grow good carrots.
Funny - it looks perfectly capable of high flying.
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/cultivation2.html
Interesting read Tim, thank you.
As i have said before, no one has told the Carrot Fly that it is not supposed to fly higher than 18"
As the fly homes in on the smell of bruised carrots i have found the best thing to do when thinning out is not to pull the carrot but just to cut the tops off. minimum smell and also if the root has entwined with the next one you are not disturbing it. Also i have found placing mothballs at intervals in the rows also helps deter the fly
I have high raised beds and have never had carrot fly
My biggest problem was my carrots last year, I'm still pulling them, but 70% were affected by carrot fly, that was a good read Tim, I tried the onion idea but as said in the article it may be a romantic idea, as Davy says no one told the fly their height limit and a gust of wind will surely assist their flying height. This year I have some big toy tub containers with the rope handles so I will be putting some in there and a few rows on the ground with a mesh barrier. ??? ;D ;D ;D
I wonder if the carrot fly follows the contours of the land / patio exactly. If it worried me, I would place 4 bamboos one in each corner, and wrap a layer of fleece around it - thus raising the level of the border/boundary of the box by say a foot.
Local eddies can drive them higher but they wouldn't fly higher from choice...
:-\
The simple answer would be to sow the carrot seed very thinly so there is no need to thin........easier said than done though.
How about mixing the seed with salt in a salt pot?.........would it work?.....anyone ever tried it?.......would the salt have any effect on growth?
Saw one chap on TV some time ago,(cant remember when or the programme)earth up his carrots when the foliage was about 2" high.
Maybe earthing up after thinning out is another answer?
Perhaps fine dry sand would be better than salt?
I had very little damage from ground grown carrots last year. I did find a couple of flies and was able to squish them with no trouble at all. They are fairly dopey.
It does amaze me though how, if they can'y fly more than 2ft high, how they get into my garden in the first place. We have 6ft fences all round. (Not that they will standing after the storms).
That's a great link Tim, it's in my bookmarks ;)