Grow carrots yourself
Growing carrots is easy and anyone can succeed. It is also fun to grow carrots together with the children. All you need is a bag of seeds and a small patch of soil in the garden. Or why not try growing carrots in a few large buckets on the balcony?

Growing your own carrots is easy and tasty
Growing carrots has been common in Sweden since the 1700s (18th century), when they were imported to the country. Anyone who wants to grow something easy in the vegetable plot should grow carrots! For anyone who thinks carrots are only orange and elongated there is plenty left to discover. Besides the ones with the usual look, you can grow carrots that look many other ways – for example yellow, white or red. There are long, pointed, blunt or round shapes to choose between for anyone growing carrots themselves.

How to grow carrots
Carrots can be grown in most soils, but the ideal is a fairly sandy, loose soil. When growing carrots you need to remove stones and other hard lumps so the carrots can grow long and straight. Any hard spots will inevitably give the grower a harvest of crooked, forked or misshapen root vegetables.

The growing site should be sunny and open, without big trees that shade or compete for water and nutrients. The soil where you grow carrots should preferably be fertilised generously with manure. Carrot seeds can be sown directly once the frost has left the ground and the soil has become dry enough to work. Carrot seeds should be sown about 1 cm deep and the distance between the seeds in the row should be about 4–5 cm. The distance between the rows when growing carrots should be kept at about 30 cm – then it is easy to reach in to weed and harvest.

Growing carrots requires minimal care, but water is needed of course, and it can also be good to cover the crop with horticultural fleece if you have problems with carrot flies. Weed now and then so the carrots don’t have to compete for light or water.

If you want to know more about how to store your harvested carrots you can read the article Harvest time – looking after your harvest.