Baytree Garden Centre's Mark Cox shares his seven golden rules for your carrot seeds

In his latest column, Baytree Garden Centre's Mark Cox shares his seven golden rules for carrot seeds...

Unlike normal weekends, where the entire Cox household - including Teddy Dog - head out somewhere for some quality family time, number one daughter and the current Mrs Cox both left me for a good looking American, who just happens to front their favourite band that they both seem to adore.

So, for a whole 12 hours on Saturday, I was afforded not only full control of the remote control and the fridge which I could raid wearing just my pants (which I did). I could also spend some time in the garden without anyone asking me when I might be finished.

So after lunching together, I wished them bon voyage - that’s French you know - and when their car had left the cul-de-sac I decided that today I was going to sow my carrot seeds.

There is a lot written about growing carrots and, in particular, you’ll find plenty of talk centring on carrot root fly larvae destroying crops. They can be a real problem but I think if you follow a few simple rules you can massively reduce the chances of suffering carrot root fly attack.

However, before I touch on those rules we really need to focus on choosing a variety of carrot seed, preparing the soil and the sowing the seed itself.

Thankfully many seed growers have developed carrot seeds that have resistance to carrot root fly. Such an example is “Flyaway F1 Hybrid” which is the variety I am going to sow, that’s rule one.

With the variety chosen the next step is to prepare the soil. Rule two - carrots thrive in light well drained soil that holds a little moisture. For the best - straightest - carrots it’s important to remove stones and any large debris from the soil where they will be sowed. Using a fork, dig over the area you’ve designated for your carrot crop and dig down to a depth of about 10 inches/25cm and put a good amount of well-rotted farmyard manure into the soil. Once you have turned the soil over, broken the large clumps down and everything is mixed in - and the area is free of stones etc - stop for a moment and enjoy a cup of tea as you’ve probably worked quite hard up to this point.

Rule three - with energy levels restored, rake the soil level and then, using the edge of a trowel, create a drill, which is essentially a planting trench about ½ inch or 1cm deep. Depending upon how much room you have and how many seeds came in the packet you may well have to create another drill 4inchs/10cm apart running parallel to the original drill.

Rule four - using your thumb and forefinger sow a thin line of carrot seeds along the drill, it’s important to space the carrot seeds out as best as you can. We are trying to avoid the need to thin the carrots out as they grow. It is the process of picking/thinning carrots which really attracts carrot root fly they have an incredibly acute sense of smell.

Rule five - once sown into the drill, cover with soil and give them a good watering in with a rose head attached to the watering can as to not wash the seed away. Rule six - as a further precaution, cloche or cover your newly sown soil with garden fleece to protect the seeds as they germinate and to mask any scent that they may give off.

Rule seven - as they grow and develop don’t be tempted to thin them, just gently remove any weeds from around the carrots.

Later in the year we’ll harvest them and they will taste like they belong on the plate of a Michelin restaurant.