I came across a cool idea for planting carotts or small seeds the other day in an old "square foot gardening book" circa 80's. You build a wooden frame the size of the bed you want to plant, (mine are divided into 4ft. sections) then attach chicken wire to the bottom.. This allows you to evenly place your seeds. We made one and it works like a charm. I will also use it for beets, radishes. green onions,etc. I will put some onions in with my carrots. Thanks

Raised Beds. I only grow carrots in the deep loose soil of raised beds. Water, Water, Water until they are well germinated. Good luck!

1908 --There are basically 2 ways to plant carrot, For large production most people mechanical seed as thin as machine lets and let them grow in the proper muck/peat soil,cultivate 2-3 times and fertilize. This technique produces many carrots but are all not uniform and have to be processed (#1,#2,cull and so on)
For small production 200-1000 row feet plow a trench about 8 inch,s deep and fill half way with compost. Fill up the rest of the furrow with the loose dirt that you plowed.
This is more time consuming but if you seed fairly thinly and do a final thinning of 1 carrot per 2-3 inches you will have beautiful carrots for market( add some 12-12-12 fertilizer between the compost and dirt)
Your yield should be about 1 bundle of market ready carrots per every 2 feet.
I have used this latter technique with very good success and found that there is a great market for fresh home-grown carrots because not many market gardeners bother with them.
DEEP, LOOSE, WELL FERTILIZED SOIL WITH AT LEAST 1 INCH OF WATER PER WEEK & PROPER THINNING!

I do have the carrots in raised beds now. "microgrow" I am wanting to plant more carrtos for my roadside stand. Do you use a "plant jr." or do you sow by hand? I have several varieties that I would like to try.

1908, I use a good old push seeder mod.1001B. I plug every other hole in the carrot plate to get a thinner planting.

Here is a link that might be useful: check out seeder

Sprinkle ashes from your woodstove lightly, uniformly over the carrot bed for organic method of eliminating root maggots.

(Nothing more discouraging than a long, straight, perfect carrot marred by holes and wiggly trails all across it!)

I will put down some ashes. I do have a few carrots that have started to germinate, it has been so cold here for almost 2 weeks so I will wait and see. I would like to have enough to can and sell at my roadside stand. I have never grown them before and was told they were easy.

Squrls, do the wood ashes go in the bottom of the trench or on top once the trench is seeded and filled with soil? Plenty of ashes from bonfires this summer!

I grew carrots successfully this year, I put them in a box in the hoop house, approximately 6-8" of composted horse manure. Nothing else, just sprinkled the seed and totally soaking the soil. I did cover with cardboard for awhile, til the mice started making tunnels under the cardboard. After that, I just left them uncovered.

Marla