I made a raised garden for my carrots and underestimated the number of carrots that would germinate. Now they are all bunched together and was wondering if I should wait until they are bigger and remove all the smaller ones? Or remove them now? Or wait?
by Big_WasteBin
13 Comments
Thin for the win!
You must thin them or you’ll only get super tiny carrots with that density. Remove them now so that the roots have space to grow.
If they get too big, you tend to disturb the ones you want to keep and they may not grow well.
Thin, use scissors instead of pulling so you don’t attract carrot fly
Yeah those things are stepping on each others toes
Realistically you probably need to remove 95% of them.
Consider the width of the carrot you’re trying to grow. Now triple that so that the leaves have room to grow. That’s the spacing you’ll need between each plant.
Carrot seedlings are vulnerable, so you could thin in stages.
carrots are one thing that will always do that….tiny seeds you can’t place one at a time like, say, peas….so the choice is thinning or either smaller carrots, weirder carrots (siamese twins etc), or both
If you pull them you will damage the taproots of adjacent plants and get deformed carrots. Wait a little longer and cut the smaller ones with scissors until you get the right spacing. It will be tedious.
Now is the time. Go grab a tweezers!
You don’t have to thin as much as some people are saying or as soon. Look up Charles Dowding on youtube. He’s a British gardener and he leaves things much closer together and starts thinning as the plants get bigger. I don’t thin my carrots till much farther along and I seed them densely and I get a TON of nice sized carrots. I’ll just start thinning later though.
One per inch or two.
In addition to everyone, I hope that’s a deep bed coz if that’s only 12” filled half way and the dirt is hard clay underneath, you might get some short bitter nubs
Fyi when thinning: many sprouts are delicious. Especially radishes, specifically.
Oh man! I have carrot envy. I planted three rows and I’ll be lucky if I get a dozen total based on what I can see so far. I think most didn’t make it through a cold snap.