We learn today how to plant and grow carrots, along with some book reading from Monty Don’s great gardening book. Visit our community site for more info http://gardenfork.tv Distributed by Tubemogul.

Video Transcription

[Music Playing] Male: Hey, today, we are going to plant carrots and I have never really had any good luck with carrots. So we are going to try again, Lyn bought some nice little seed pockets. So we are going to see what happens. One thing I thought was maybe our soil was a little too heavy with clay, but I do not know really—it is not because this is basically compost of cow manure. But I thought we do try a thing where we basically mix a bunch of sand in with the soil so I thought we do two rows. Female: A trial? Male: Yes like a trial, like a test. So I am going to put some sand on one side and no sand on the other and we are going to see what happens there. Female: Where did that sand come from? Male: This is called tube sand. I usually use this in the back of my truck because the back of the truck has no way to—so you buy like four tubes of sand. Then it was just regular core of sand. Female: Already then. That is 70 pounds where if it says so. What do you think Mitch? Is that pure sand? Male: Yes, it is organic sand as far as I am concerned. Female: [Laughter] As far as I am concerned. Male: Well I hope you what— Female: I have never seen it, otherwise. And that makes it easier for the carrots to grow through. Male: Yes because carrots, it is big root basically and it likes to go deep. The carrots have big roots and that is easier you can make it for them to stick their root in the soil then. But I think carrots that are grown commercially on big farms; they grow them in just about sand I think. Female: So I was reading a little bit about the carrots and you are suppose to plant them with chives because it gets rid of some kind of mite or something like carrots got. Male: Oh okay, so we could divide our chives from the herb garden and we could plant them along. My friend John Faison (ph) is a big advocate of planting garlic and chives and onions and scallions around their beds because it was generally an organic bug repellant. Female: And you do not need any tools for this? Male; Well, your hands work well. The hands are good tools. These are my hand model. Hands that I am getting dirty. I want to dig down pretty deep because the carrots like to go down deep. We got some different carrots that we are going to plant and the seeds are really tiny so Monte Dan in his books are just mixing the seeds with vermiculite and I am putting it in a little container and kind of go on like this. So that is what we are going to do. Female: What is going on in there? Male: Back to the carrots. Female; Someone twisted their arm. Male: Come here. Female: And they put it on the labels, on the stakes and put at how many days still germination because you are not suppose to pull them up until then because the sugars have not gone down to the root and the root is what makes it super orange or super yellow on that case. Because some of those are yellow carrots and if you pull them up too early, they will taste icky as it were. You know why we are planting a carrot garden do you not? Male: To feed the horse. Female: Right. Male: Because carrots are only $0.99 a pound, it is all right. Female: And those seeds are like $4.00. I want to see how tiny these seeds are. Male: They are not that tiny. Female: They are smaller seeds. Male: I am just going to—I do not need to— Female: They are like dill seeds. You must thought that than I am. I like just to fill them in there. Well, look at that, it is the garden fork. Male: So you want it to kind of—you want to eliminate the big clunky clouds. Female: Clunky clogs? Male: Clouds of soil. Basically, when you are planting stuff, the depth where your plant is determined by the size of the seed and for really tiny seeds, you want them at or near the soil surface. Female: All right, were you reading instructions out loud. Male: So a quarter inch deep and finally work fertile soil. So I am going to try this. I am going to just crumble soil on the top. Female: You can take some advice. Male: You can take some advice from the boss lady. So we did some vermiculite and then just to a l