Hensley’s Carrot Growing Guide • Fundamentals of Carrot Culture

Carrot Bed Checklist

• ✓ Light, loose, crumbly loam rather than heavy, compacted, clay or rocky soil.
• ✓ Mostly free of stones and debris.
• ✓ As clean of weeds as you can get it; several early weedings help. Flame-weeding right before sowing, or right before the seedlings emerge, is especially useful. (See #3, Timing, below.)
• ✓ Slightly acid soil, pH 6.0–6.8, which also suits most other vegetables.

Carrots do best with steady conditions and no big swings in temperature or moisture. The straightest, smoothest roots come from deep, loose, fertile sandy loam or muck soils that hold water well enough to stay evenly moist.

As far as you can control it, you create those conditions through good bed preparation and spacing, and well-timed weeding and watering.

#1 • Prepare Your Carrot Beds in Advance

Carrots want deeply loosened soil with good drainage, ideally about 18" deep for long varieties, though short varieties can manage with less. Half-long and round types tolerate heavier or stonier soil. (See Schematic of Carrot Types.)

Loose soil lets the roots push down without hitting resistance, which otherwise causes misshapen carrots. Forked, stubby or twisted roots may be curious, but they break more easily at harvest, are harder to wash, ship and store, and usually sell poorly compared with smooth, well-shaped roots.

For tools that help prepare carrot beds, see our Guide to Small-Scale Bed Preparation Tools and Eliot Coleman's 6-Step Bed Preparation Method.

#2 • Space Your Carrot Plantings According to Type

Row Spacing

• Leave at least 12" between rows; 18" is better.
• How close to plant depends on the variety and the size of its tops. Small-rooted or short-topped types such as 'Atlas' (a Paris Market type) and 'Adelaide' can go a bit closer than larger Nantes and Imperator types. (See the Carrot Key Growing Info or the seed packet for more sowing details.)
• Your cultivating equipment's width also determines spacing.

Seed Spacing

• Sow seeds about 3/4–1" apart and 1/4–1/2" deep in a band about 2" wide, roughly 30 seeds per foot.
• Pelleted seed in a precision seeder gives tidy, evenly spaced rows and saves labor and seed. (Read more below on Pelleted Carrot Seed.)

Planting Depth

• Sow seed roughly 1/4–1/2" deep.

Sowing pelleted carrot seed with the Four-Row Precision Seeder

Why Use Pelleted Seed?

• Carrot seed is tiny, and its size differs between varieties and even between lots from the same harvest. The seeds are also long, ridged and bristly, which makes it hard to drop them one at a time by hand or by machine.
• Raw seed plantings also usually need thinning, which takes a lot of labor.
• Many of our carrots are offered as pelleted seed, including organic options.
• Pelleting coats each seed to a uniform shape, size and weight so it can be sown singly at the right spacing and depth. Less seed is wasted and much less thinning is needed.

For details, see our Pelleted Seed Tech Sheet

#3 • Timing for Weeding Success

There are many ways to weed and cultivate carrot beds, including flame weeding, tractor-mounted cultivators, wheel hoes and a variety of long- and short-handled hand tools. Each has situations where it works best.

Carrots reward careful timing of weeding. For the least work and the best results, weed or cultivate several times during the season, at least three and ideally four. Time it like this:

Pre-Emergence Carrot-Weeding Schedule

• Before sowing, it's best to weed or till in weeds more than once.
• Our advice is to add flame-weeding right before you sow, or right before the carrot seed germinates.
• A popular trick for timing pre-emergence flaming, especially among organic growers, is to lay a piece of clear plastic or glass over the first few feet of the row and check under it every day. The covered seed warms and sprouts first, so when you see seedlings there, flame the bed: the rest of the row should emerge within 2–3 days.

Post-Emergence Carrot-Weeding Schedule

• If you aren't using pelleted seed and will need to thin, do the first weeding as soon as the seed leaves appear. That keeps the carrots ahead of the next flush of weeds.
• Do the second post-emergence weeding/cultivation once seedlings are about 3–4" tall.
• Do a third pass at 5–6".
• A fourth pass at 7–8" is a good idea.

For more, see Small-scale weeding and cultivation tools that save time.

#4 • Watering schedule for the best carrot crop

Carrots need the right amount of water at the right times, neither too little nor too much. Here's how.

From Sowing To Emergence

• Keep the soil consistently moist until the seed sprouts, which can take 1–3 weeks.
• If the surface dries and crusts, seedlings struggle to break through and the stand suffers. If a crust does form, keep the surface damp to soften it and help seedlings push through.

Post-Emergence

• Once the tops start leafing out, keep the soil moist but water less often and in smaller amounts than at first. Plants are established by now, and easing off encourages the roots to grow down.
• Late in the season, as roots bulk up, water less often but more deeply.

As with most crops, drought during the first few weeks is very harmful: fewer seeds germinate and seedlings get a weak start. Dry spells while roots are developing often leave them undersized and slow to mature. With small round Paris Market carrots like 'Atlas', dry soil makes the roots stretch longer as they search deeper for water.

Too much water causes problems as well. Overwatering, especially in the first weeks after sowing, can lead to forked roots. Heavy rain or excess irrigation often splits roots, and big swings in moisture cause cracking too. Wet soil or wet leaves can also encourage some diseases.

Carrot Pay Dirt

Depending on where you farm and how much experience you have, carrots can be harder to grow well than other staples like potatoes and onions. Like them, though, carrots sell steadily all year. Give them a well-prepared bed, correct spacing, and timely weeding and watering, and they repay the extra effort with flavor, versatility and good sales. Use these guidelines to get the basics right, then fine-tune for your own conditions.

Next

• Carrot guide part 2: extending the carrot season • article
• Carrot guide part 3: harvest, handling and storage • article
• Carrot guide part 4: carrot pests and diseases • article

Learn More

• Carrots (growing information)
• Pelleted carrots (growing information)
• Growing carrots with Dr. John Navazio • (A Way to Garden)