First Carrots well chuffed.

[vegmandan]

Pulled my 1st carrots today and was really chuffed.

I have a pretty heavy soil but spent ages rotavating it earlier this year which seems to have done the trick.

And I think the last month of constant rain up here has drowned all the carrot flies  too. ;D

[vegmandan]

[lorna]

Wow they look good enough to eat!! I love raw carrots but not cooked. Mine are about 1" long :'(

[posie]

I'm so jealous!! Well done!  Not a carrot in site on my lottie  :'(

[kt.]

Look fine.  Which variety?   (My OH is enjoying my first year success at carrots too. Hasn't even posted me a picture of how they turned out, so I will never know.)

[Duke Ellington]

Wow!! vegmandan they are brilliant !! Well done!!

Duke

[Georgie]

I'm impressed, they look wonderful.   ;D  I can't grow carrots.   :(

G x

[Sparkly]

They look great! We have done much better with carrots this year - we have actually got some without carrot fly damage LOL

[Chris Graham]

Excellent result.

I got a few just recently which were great, next year "Autumn King" all the way!  ;)

[Suzanne]

They look fantastic - I pulled up some of mine yesterday as well and were straight with no carrot fly but still had knobbles on them - yours look show quality. My OH who dislikes carrots wolfed them down as they were so sweet. In fact he ate them so quickly I didn't have time to take a photo!

[sawfish]

They're great.

I'm jealous though as mine were looking big and fantastic and now they've all died due to carrot fly.
:'(

[hopalong]

Great stuff.  Apart from rotivating, did you do anything else - e.g. add some sand?

[debster]

beautiful  carrots the only way i can grow them is in tubs

[Gobby]

Really nice, have had a go at something slightly differant this year and put in some purple haze, im hoping they shape up the same as that, though im not betting they will :D

[Emagggie]

They look perfect vegmandan  :o. I have trouble growing them at all here, but I see that two rows have at least germinated so fingers crossed. ;D

[SMP1704]

Big well done and round of applause from me ;D ;D

Are they a nantes variety?

[vegmandan]

Great stuff.  Apart from rotivating, did you do anything else - e.g. add some sand?

I did rotavate a load of coarse limestone grit in this year to try to help with drainage but I think it's the fact that I resisted the temptation to water them at all when it was really dry in April/May,and they seem to have sent a really deep tap root down in search of moisture.

I watered when it was dry last year and they were all shallow rooted and forked,and I don't have a particularly stoney soil.

So for me from now on it's never water carrots no matter how dry it is. ;)

As for Carrot fly I seem to be lucky with this.

My plot is in an exceptionally exposed field and is really windy so I've surround it with small meshed wind break (2-3mm ish) at a considerable expense but It seems to be small enough to keep the little sods out,but I always sow carrots between garlic or onions which also apparently helps to keep 'em away.