The problem that you're seeing is either due to the soil being too compacted or your carrots haven't been thinned out. I've never had a problem growing carrots in raised beds. My beds are roughly 1 1/2 ft tall and contain a very loose mixture of soil and compost. Carrot root systems are actually quite extensive so the deeper and looser your raised beds the better. I plant mine in very shallow rows. Once the seedlings come up, I thin them out so that there is a couple of inches between carrots. The rows are similarly spaced around 2 inches apart so you can grow quite a few carrots in a very small area (Approx 36/sq. ft). I must have harvested around 200 this fall and I only had 1/2 of one of my raised beds (2 x 6) planted with them. They are a variety called Tasty Treat. They have a very intense flavor. Here's what a few of them looked like (The carrots in the middle are roughly 6 inches long):

Make sure that you water them periodically if you don't get adequate rainfall. If you have a lot of compost in the soil then they probably don't need anything additional as far as fertilizer.

Any suggestions on lightening up my soil? It is a built soil, I took the loam that was stripped from the woods floor when they built my house. It is sandy but has some loam in it. This is the soil:

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff173/daddymem/Carrots/P1000917.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff173/daddymem/Carrots/P1000916.jpg

http://i237.photobucket.com/albums/ff173/daddymem/Carrots/P1000915.jpg

I have leaves, grass and leaves mowed together, seaweed, and a little bit of home compost. We don't have much $$ so I gotta use what we have around. Any ideas appreciated.

TIA

From looking at your pictures, I would say that your soil is too heavy which leads to compaction. I would rake out all of the leaves, twigs, and larger matter and add as much compost as possible to loosen up the soil. It contains too much sand. I little sand is OK for creating loose soil. A lot of sand has the opposite effect. Not to mention, sand is infertile and not really contributing to the health of your crops.

I would loosen it up with a shovel, hoe, or whatever tools you are using to a depth of at least a foot. Keep adding the compost because it really works wonders enriching the soil and giving it a looser texture. The earthworms usually found in compost help dig channels through the soil and over time as they eat and poop they provide substantial improvement in the condition of the soil. For carrots, it is important to avoid compacting the area once you have it loosened up.

My goal if I was dealing with the mounds shown in your third picture would be to skim off the top half of each mound and replace that volume with an equivalent volume of compost and mix everything as thoroughly as possible. That would give you the texture that I'm talking about. My raised beds are roughly 1 1/2 ft tall and each one contained around half of its volume in compost when I was filling them. In my area, I can get as much compost as I want from the local transfer station (aka the town dump) for free. The texture in my raised beds is more like potting soil than regular soil. It's very light and fluffy but it holds water well due to the high amount of organic matter in it.