"Amsterdam 3 - Sprint" (August 2013)
Baby Carrots are all very well, but I want Maincrop Carrots too! I know from previous attempts that growing carrots without proper protection is doomed to failure. They would just be be riddled with flies and unuseable. So this year I am going all-out for "proper protection".So the maincrop carrots are going to be grown in my premier raised bed - the big Woodblocx one. They will share it with some parsnips. This bed now has a good depth of soil consisting primarily of home-made compost, but since it is going to play host to the carrots, I have added a bit of sand to improve the drainage:
I dug-over the bed with a hand-trowel, removing any twigs or other debris I could see, and then raked it "to a fine tilth" as they say - in other words until all the lumps were broken down. Conditions seemed perfect for sowing. The soil was damp but not wet, and seemed quite warm to the touch.
After sowing the seeds I erected the protection. First I pushed in six aluminum tubes from my "Build-a-Ball" kit, and then slotted into them three flexible plastic hoops:
Then over the top of the hoops went that large piece of Enviromesh that I bought the other day. It is way too big for this present configuration, but I deliberately got a piece that will allow for a taller configuration if I decide to grow something like Brassicas. The excess mesh was rolled up and secured at ground level with a number of bricks.
So now I just have to wait... Hopefully this setup will exclude foxes as well as Carrot Root Flies.