Growing Carrots
I've always struggled to grow carrots. My soil is quite clay and cold so they often don't germinate or survive to be big enough to eat. This year I've tried something new.
Someone said to me that they save the inner card tubes from toilet rolls and use those to start off seeds. The tubes are rigid enough to hold compost, biodegradeable and open at the bottom so anything with a tap root isn't restricted.
Like Carrots! Now carrots hate being moved, if you move them they split, fork or die and are generally inedible. So you can't usually give them a head start indoors or in a greenhouse, which plants need in my garden - because the soil is cold and sticky.
So, I saved some toilet roll inners, stood them in a deep tray, filled them with compost and sowed my carrots. They germinated and grew fine on the window sill. I went to plant them out and the cardboard was still solid enough to handle reasonably well. I left 2 seedlings in each tube and set them in rows in the veg bed. I did help them along with a liberal sprinkle of organic slug pellets.
This all happened months ago and I now have several rows of carrots grown this way and I just dug up the first young ones to try - and they taste lovely, the roots are long and straight, but could have done with another week or so to bulk up a bit. Still, a successful carrot crop.
I did run out of tubes though, so I did some with pots made with the Paper Potter (see my intel Make your own plant pots) and those seem to be doing just as well.
So, save your toilet roll inners and plant carrots in them!
