Grow carrots in potsVeg plot carrots

If you have room, you can grow carrots in your vegetable plot. By making space for several varieties, you can enjoy fresh carrots from July until the end of winter. Sow early varieties from late April.

The soil’s early-morning temperature needs to be above 5ºC for a week before sowing, so use a to check. Sow maincrop carrots in May.

Growing guide

Use a fork when harvesting

• Dig and rake the soil into a seedbed. Using a trowel, make seed drills (small trenches) 15mm deep and 15cm apart.
• If it’s dry, dribble water into the seed drill and let it soak in before sowing. Cover with loose, dry soil.
• Sow seed thinly – one seed every 1cm or so.
• If seedlings come up too thickly, carefully remove weaker ones to leave a seedling every 25mm or so. Be aware that disturbing them could encourage carrot fly (see 'Container carrots').
• Don’t water carrots unless it is exceptionally dry. Hoe or hand weed to keep weeds down.
• When harvesting, use a fork to ease carrot roots out as you need them from August onwards.

When to sow

Sowing carrots straight into the ground is notoriously unreliable. If the soil is cold and wet, the seeds can be slow to germinate and may rot before they get going.

We asked 355 trialists across the country to try sowing on different dates to find the optimum timing. See the table below for the most successful sowing dates.

Growing carrots: Reader's favourite sowing dates
Sowing dates	Popularity
W/c 20 March	38%
W/c 3 April	27%
W/c 17 April	21%
W/c 1 May	14%

Verdict 

Sow in late April or early May for the best chance of success.

Maincrop or early carrots?

Maincrop carrots are slower growing, but produce heavier roots

The best carrots for growing in containers are early varieties. These have been bred to produce edible roots in as little as eight weeks from sowing. You may come across them in supermarkets, where they are sold with their foliage on in bunches.

Maincrop carrots are slower growing, but bulk up to produce much heavier roots which are sold during the winter. These differences aren’t set in stone, however, as early carrots will continue bulking up, and any you leave can be harvested in autumn or winter.

At one time all maincrop carrots were dug up in the autumn and stored indoors over winter. But it’s easier to leave them where they are. Just mark the ends of the rows, so you can find them once the foliage has died down. If it’s really cold, cover the row with a layer of straw.

There are dozens of varieties of maincrop carrots, and several groups – including ‘Autumn King’, ‘Berlicum’, ‘Chantenay’ and ‘Nantes’ types – have become popular with supermarkets due to their distinctive wedge shape and reputation for flavour.