Giant Tea Spoon V Tiny Carrots

Well the Carrot harvest the year was an interesting one. I'd steered clear of growing carrots due to stories about carrots pulsating with carrot fly which honestly made me want to vom.  I decided to face my fear and armed with my B&Q Value F1 Carrot packet of 1500 seeds it was time to plant some carrots.

Above is the resulting crop from my seeds, I didn't plant too many as I was lacking for space and needed to fit them in-between the Chicory and the Broccoli in the cold frame so I wasn't expecting a bumper harvest.  I wasn't too concerned about the meager quantity because after all it was just a trial...but the size?!

Above are the same carrots but this time with a tea spoon next to them...not a table spoon a tea spoon! They did taste great, but I was a little disappointed with how small they were.  I figured that I hadn't prepared the soil enough for them with the soil beneath the cold frame being too compacted.

My solution to all of this (although I'm not sure how successful it will be is to have deeper raised beds.  Below is one I constructed on the side of the potting shed with a solitary broad bean (the indoor ones have grown much better) using some timber and a few steaks in the ground...the path is under construction.


In here I've recently planted a variety of root vegetables to see if there's any major difference. This position gets partial shade during the day.  I decided to go for:
Some more of my trusty B&Q F1 Value Carrots
Now just got to wait to see how they pan out.  I have another deeper bed on the opposite side of the garden, but don't have any compost in it yet...I should hopefully get to fill it over the next few weeks with the remainder of the root veg.

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