[RichardA]

I would appreciate an opinion on carrots please - never my strongest crop although I do very well with most things. Carrots much in demand though from grandkids etc so I need to up my game. I have  a couple of deep beds that have just been cleared of strawberries - soil is a loam but on the clay side -- clearly I have to add nutrients and I have some very aged manure available but in addition is it worth adding sharp sand to lighten it and if it is then can I ask if rotation matters for carrots or can I use the same spot for  3 or 4 years in a row??
Opinions appreciated please.
R

[JayG]

The ideal soil for carrots is a light, sandy loam with no stones, but of course most of us have to put up with something considerably worse than the ideal.

Adding manure just gives the carrots another excuse to fork, but then again if your soil is starved so will your carrots be, so dressing with a general fertiliser is probably a better bet.

Heavy clay is probably the most difficult to grow good carrots in, yours doesn't sound too bad but a bit of sharp sand will probably help.

Probably fair to say that repeat growing of any crop in the same soil is not recommended, although some crops are at much greater risk than others - with carrots it's carrot fly which can overwinter in the soil, but if you successfully protect with enviromesh that shouldn't be an issue.

[Stevens706]

Last year I created 4 raised beds about 6 x 2 feet each, filled with council compost. Two I used for carrots as they were covered with fleece, still pulling great carrots. This year I will use the other 2 beds which had manure mixed in them and used for onions, so I will be alternating every year between carrots and onions.

[BabbyAnn]

The variety of carrots that do well on my heavy clay have an air of being a brute rather than wimpy - distinctly wedge shaped with a very broad shoulder or short and squat.  Digging in lots of compost for a different crop (eg potatoes) the year before seems to improve the soil structure and have the right nutrients (with a scattering of Growmore for good measure)

And of course netted against carrot fly is all important 

[Totty]

Don't add manure now. Ideally you need to grow a hungry crop, ie brassicas in manured ground first, then peas and beans or onions the next year, then follow with carrots the following year, topping up with BFB when needed.
 If I was in your position I would get some compost and dig it through nice and deep, rotavating it in would be better. Adding sand to garden soil is a waste of time IMO. After a few years of digging organic matter into your soil it will drain much better as well as hold moisture and nutrients better. Adding sand to clay soils won't make any difference in the first year anyway.

Totty

[digga666]

I heard you could grow carrots in just sand and seaweed has anybody tried this?

[Trillium]

Show growers do carrots in mostly sand with liquid feedings. They look great and are very long but I'm not sure the taste is there.

Carrots do need to feed on something and sand lightened with compost and a bit of manure will do the trick. My mother and I manure our carrot plots every year and we always get wonderful sweet carrots that never fork unless they hit a stone. Over manuring might make older carrots a bit hairy but in decades of growing carrots we've never had them fork due to manuring.

[solway cropper]

All my carrots are grown in containers and they out perform anything that i used to grow on the veg plot. You have full control of the growing medium and can adjust feeding accordingly. If the compost is finely sieved and free draining you should get good straight roots. The only drawback is its more time consuming...not a problem for me.

[Growster...]

One of the books I was reading recently quoted an old boy who said that a carrot bed was no use, unless you could plunge a walking stick straight down to the handle with no effort...

Hmmm...

[savbo]

I had much better results in containers than in the ground, despite having nice soft soil, so this year I plan on having about six big containers (old recycling boxes and broken trugs) sown at different times.

The other advantage is you can move the whole container into shed/greenhouse, keeping the carrots reasonably fresh through the winter

sav