Carrots and Potatoes

I've decided to do many of my root veg in containers this year.

I bought some good 30 litre pots from a local hydroponics store, at a very good price. They were less than £4 each, but I don't remember the exact price.

Ten were bought, originally for the potatoes, but then I saw a good idea for container grown carrots and used two up for that.

Taking advice mostly from the YouTube channel Home Grown Veg, I sifted some used compost for the lower levels, putting all the sifted waste at the very bottom which wouldn't bother roots or the forming carrot. I filled up all the rest with well-sifted new compost up to near the top, weathered well, levelled off, sowed carrots in approximately three cm spacings... I planted several together, thinking I could thin out the weaker ones. On the video, he only planted singly... I don't know how well these will germinate though yet. He used a grid method using old wiring cut to the shape of the top of the container. A good idea! I just guessed, but I would say, there WERE about 45 clusters of seeds.

I grew two types. DRAGON PURPLE CARROTS from Real Seeds, which I had bought last year. Also a pack of PARIS MARKET-style short carrots - I forget name. They are several years old, so I scatterd randomly across the top, and if they don't germinate in 3 or 4 weeks, no problem, I have a well sifted soil for another batch from fresh seeds later on.

Seeds were covered with 1.5cm of sifted soil, lightly pressed, watered down, and again today, as it's been so hot...

Very interested in this experiment... The YouTube harvest looked very impressive and easy to harvest.

I also used the new 30 litre containers for potato growing. I don't fancy digging over the allotment much if container growing is so productive and easy to harvest too. I'd only chitted up 5 types of POTATOES this year of 6 seed potatoes each.

PINK FIR APPLE
RED DUKE OF YORK
PICASSO
a BLUE type
MARIS PIPER

I'm going to grow THREE of each in a container to see how they do... This will be fine for the salad/earlies, but might be too many for the larger Main crops... But at least this way I can compare. Then I will try just TWO if each type in another container, but as I used up two for the carrots, that will have to wait. The final single carrot I will try growing in much smaller, maybe 10 litre pots...

I used a mixture of Potato Fertiliser and Chicken Manure, watered it in well. The box said I should really have done that THREE weeks beforehand!

For the moment, I will water these half-filled pots to allow the fertiliser to dissolve some. Then I will plant three tubers on Tues or Weds... Can't wait!

As usual, the potatoes were chitted slowly on a NORTH facing window. I find this produces the shortest but healthiest chits, rather than have them stretch too far. Unfortunately one type produced roots too as it sweated in a carrier bag before positioning in the window. The roots didn't die back and I doubt will cause too much of a problem.