[tudou]

Sowed (sew?) my carrots in the second week of April, but no sign of anything yet! There's a few weeds growing around the bed and I'm a bit scared to hoe incase some of them happen to carrot sprouts. Am I being a bit too impatient? The bed gets plenty of sun and watering.

[ember]

Hi toudou,
Not sure what your problem is but my plot neightbour sowed his in mid-March, in open ground with no cover, and they only showed up a couple of weeks ago, the carrots that is not the plot neighbours.
Your seedlings may have been eaten by slugs  (apparently that's a common cause) or it may have been too chilly.  How about trying some fleece on top. It's still quite cool where we are in West Yorks and mine are under fleece. Have been since I put seeds in end of March and there doing nicely.
Good luck with them. M

[stompy]

I think you need to sow again personally.
I grow mine in flower buckets now after very poor germination in open ground.

I sow a fresh bucket every 3 weeks, we've got 2 buckets going at the moment and a 3rd will be sown this weekend.
I water well then place a piece of clear pollycarb on top of the bucket to act a a propogator and keep the moisture in the bucket.

They germinate after around 3 weeks which is why i sow every 3 weeks, we can harvest every 2 to 3 weeks when the carrots are either baby salad carrots or full grown.

We store them in the bucket in the garage in winter and harvest them a bucket at a time.
I will sow several buckets at once in late july to grow on for winter use as stored roots.

[Hey Jude]

I'm with Stompy on this one, sow again as you've still got time for them to do well.

[tudou]

I may have a wee dig and see what they're doing.

I think in future I might just sprout all my sensitive seeds in my greenhouse as my sweetcorn and squashes are raging at the moment. 

[stompy]

The only problem with carrots is you can't allow for any root distubance at all or they will just fork and be mostly unusable.

This is why i grow in flower buckets as they can grow to their full size uninterupted in there.

Yo could also build a deep bed 1mtr x 1mtr and fill it with 70x30 seived compost to seved sand and grow them in there as this will give you more controll over germination, and you can cover it with plastic to give them a better chance of germination, then flece against the carrot fly.

[davidmw]

I like the planter idea,  I think im gonna give that a go would it be an advantage growing them permenantly in a greenhouse. 

[greentig3r]

I' m also going to try Stompy's method. I have one carrot growing and its not in one of the places i put them!

[Lulu]

I'm having trouble with carrots to - they seem to be in hiding.  Last year I had an abundant crop - I recall thinking then that they were slow.  So I am hoping they are being slower than slow otherwise will have to (gulp!)buy some for my tea.

[greentig3r]

Oh dear. My one carrot growing tirned out to not even be a carrot but false carrot, queen anne's lace.

Planted my first bucket today though.

[Thephoenix572]

I thinned my trough sewn carrots today and placed over then some mint to distract any carrot root flies that are around