Carrot seeds must be sown where they will eventually mature. My advice would be not to bother with buying carrots in punnets as they do not transport into beds too well and often just turn to seed. Prepare the bed a day before sowing by raking and gently loosening the topsoil and give it a good soaking with water.

Create shallow drills (grooves to sow the seed into) about 5mm deep, sprinkle in the seed and gently backfill the soil to just lightly cover the seeds. Keep the soil moist until germination occurs and then water every week.

Once the seeds pop up they must be thinned out to 50mm apart. Make sure any weeds that grow near your carrots are kept to a minimum otherwise they will suck all the nuturiants out of the soil giving you poor carrot growth.

Finally you may need to purchase some wire mesh justy to keep birds and small animals off your crops. Personally I have chickens roaming my yard so I have bird netting covering my patches anyway. A cheap investment and it also keep kids, possoms and cats out too!

Harvesting begins when the roots are finger-sized. To know this simply dig up one and bury it back if you think it needs a bit longer. You don’t have to grow all your carrots in one go, spread out sowing a couple weeks apart.

PS: Parsnips are grown the same way, only that the seeds must be fresh, half used packets kept the previous year will be useless.