Post date: Jul 28, 2020 10:28:49 PM
By Uma Shashikant
August 3 is Full moon. Next Monday. Good time to slowly start some root plants. Carrots and beetroots. Prepare a small space that doesn’t get too much sun, but enough light. We will plant in batches all the way until August. We will begin small to test the waters. Just 9 beet seeds direct and 9 seeds in the tray. And a pinch of carrot seeds.
A square foot of space will do for each. And one seedling tray bit with 9 holes.
The enemy of summer seedlings are bugs. Bugs that will get your seedlings. They will chew them to bits soon as they germinate. Keep some amaranthus seeds to sow as trap crops for the bugs.
We will begin small and modest, next Monday. Order your seeds if you haven’t done so. The list of what we will sow for the winter is long. It must be in the blog or many here know already. Ask around.
Carrots in mid summer is madness. But we want the plant to be fully grown by the time first frost hits. Then it will stay all winter in the soil and be available to harvest all the way until end April, sweetened by the cold.
If the carrot is not fully grown before frost, very unlikely it will grow in Spring. Some do. Most don’t.
So we overwinter them. The sweetest carrots you ate are those that sit in the cold soil all winter.
So look up days to maturity on your seed packets. Allow 15 days to germinate. So if your frost date is Nov 15, and your carrot needs 75 days to mature, aug 15 is your sow date :)