I have always known that carrots had awesome healthy benefits in the total health of humans, but how they became something to plant indoor remains a memory with my family.
My son has this bad habit of eating junks; I was worried at some point when he started to grow fatter. Of course, what did I expect? But his addition of pounds was so spontaneous that I began to fear for him.
The bubble burst, however, was on a certain day; he grew this strange likeness for carrots, and for some reason, I found myself wondering what led to the shift in the right direction.
After every healthy meal that we have together, he would add, “Dad, I wondered if I could have some carrot tonight again?” His tone made me realize that there was no way we were buying the fruit shop; I have to improvise and come up with ways to grow carrots from home.
This was much easier because I was keen on growing vegetables anyway. But carrots?
My first and major attempt at growing carrots was not so bad, it was in summer, and I had a little garden outside my home. Meaning, it was the perfect reason to grow some carrots on the outside; the bedding and all of the rest of the planting and pre-planting stages were not the problems, but I was keen on my first harvest.
I mean, I had watered the beds that I had made for this group of plants, cleared out unwanted plants, and made sure that they had adequate sunlight, and some weeks afterward when I harvested, they looked lesser than the efforts that I had invested into the entire planting process.
It was painful to me, not because of my harvest alone, but because I had taught about getting my son’s attention into subsistent farming with my little garden, but this didn’t quite pan out the way that I wanted. “What do I do next?” I inquired, and it was then that I realized the essence of successive indoor cultivation of carrot vegetables.
UNDERSTANDING THE ESSENCE OF CULTIVATING CARROTS INDOOR
I was keen on making some findings as regards why my first attempt at cultivating was all bad. I realized on deeper research that it was due to exposure to excessive sunlight, given the kind of environmental condition in which my location was in at Clearwater, Florida.
I thought about an alternative measure to prevent a recurrence of this, and the one thing that came to mind was cultivating and planting carrots indoor. Someone might want to ask about how this changes anything, but the first thing that changed with my first harvest indoor was that I was able to balance the kind of exposure that my plants were getting to sunlight and water.
THE PRE-PLANTING PHASE
A lot of people assume that planting carrots indoor means that you have to diver your carrot into a big bowl, and then in a few months, you have your carrots in place. This is a wrong practice, and it is more like giving room for probabilities when you could have easily gone for the best way to maximize your efforts.
The first thing to consider in the pre-planting stage is to ensure that you understand your space. If you have a small space, you might want to consider the 8 inches to 10 inches vases, which are porous underneath for soil filtration. You could go for a larger vase if you have a wider indoor space, but one pertinent factor to note is that the proximity to growth light matters.
At this point, you decipher whether you would be making use of growth lights or an area of your indoor space that allows for subtle sunlight penetration. Of course, the purpose of this is to ensure that the plant gets the needed nutrients for its growth.
When this is taken care of, the next thing to do is to ascertain how many carrot stems could fit into your vase. One other thing to note here is aeration and spacing; the reason is that it does matter to the vegetable’s eventual harvest.
POPULAR CARROT TYPES THAT COULD BE GROWN INDOOR
The list of carrot species that could be grown on the inside of the house is quite exhaustive, but there are a few names that are certain to produce juicy harvests. To mention but a few of them would include
ð The Sweet Treat Hybrid
ð Royal Chantenay
ð Danvers
ð The Little Finger amongst others
N.B: The best way to understand which would fit your vase would be to understand how they grow and the inches of spacing they would require. After this is done, the planting stage involves the buying and planting of seeds in small light, privy containers to foster germination. When this is done, the next is to transfer plants into their respective vases, adopting typical carrot planting measures.
COMMON PRACTICES THAT AID IN FACILITATING A QUALITY INDOOR CARROT HARVEST
There are quite some practices that the indoor carrot farmer must adopt, but there are some that cannot be extricated from the entire process of indoor carrot farming. They include:
- WATERING THE SOIL: When it comes to indoor carrot farming, one thing that would be glaring to the eyes is that the soil in the vases might seem drier than normal. It is also possible that carcasses of fallen leaves and stems get dried faster. In this case, an indoor carrot farmer musty endeavor to have a water timing.
- MANURE: Everyone knows that manure or fertilizers are pertinent for the faster growth of plants, but for carrots, the low nitrogen fertilizers when they are a few inches taller could help work wonders in their growth.
- WATCH OUT FOR PESTS: The fact that they are indoor grown does not mean that they cannot be affected by pests. This is the more reason why the carrot farmer must give a close eye to the blooming plants.