Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: freefolk on July 04, 2018, 23:33
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Our carrots have been a bit hit and miss this year. I have heard sometimes better results are obtained using "pelleted" carrot seed, as opposed to normal seed. Anyone had any experience with them, and if so where is a good source of supply please? Many thanks.
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Sorry, I've no experience of pelleted seed. but if it's any consolation, I think most people have had trouble germinating carrot seed this year.
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I have sown some pelleted seed this year. The beauty is there's no need to thin them as you can space them accordingly and can be precise as they don't blow away and scatter when sowing. But then you don't get to eat the tasty thinnings, so horses for courses reaqlly!
I'm not sure about better germination though, but as oldgrunge has said, it's been a difficult year this year.
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I tried pelleted seed a couple of years ago, purely because they were on offer!
I found germination very poor. At least with seeds you can thin where necessary and hopefully have a row with no gaps.
My seeds were slow to get going too this year.
Elaine
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I tried this type of seed acouple of years ago,i found them easy to plant easy to space but the germination was awful,i never did them again.
I would buy normal seed take the trouble to thin them out,much better results a bigger crop which is what we all want,thats why we like to grow our own veg :).Lillileaf
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I've done well with seed tape from King Seed now for three years in a row, but never used pelleted seed, sorry.
Sorry to hear people have had difficulties with carrot seed not germinating this year though...
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I think that pelleted seeds need to break through the covering before they get going which works in some cases, but the amount of carrot seeds you get in a packet should be enough if germination levels are poor.
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I think that pelleted seeds need to break through the covering before they get going which works in some cases, but the amount of carrot seeds you get in a packet should be enough if germination levels are poor.
Not in my case, even sowing three packets of carrot seeds has so far resulted in about 10 seedlings. As this is 10 seedlings more than I normally get I think it is a case of don't bother from now on.
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Well, for my pennyworth, I used pelleted seed this year and will never use them again. I sowed 3 rows, popping them in a little (10mm), hole, put water in the hole, covered it up, waited------and waited,----not one came through. finally in desperation, (as they are very easy to handle), sowed 3 rows of ordinary carrot seeds, then as a test, sowed another row of the pelleted seeds, (after soaking them in water for a couple of hours), the ordinary seeds came up, (not as well as I would have liked but I did sow them a little late), and the pelleted seeds ----3 germinated!!!!. So that's it for me.
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Interesting to read about the poor germination, i have had quite successful sowings of carrot varieties this year, not done anything different to usual other than tilled the soil very fine. Tried pellets a couple of tears ago, were unsuccessful, you may have to give them more water than normal seed to help break the pellet material down.