How and when to sow carrots before winter
The value of early vegetables is because they appear when you want them most.
This is the reason for the popularity of sowing carrots before winter. After all, you can enjoy your own grown carrots 2 weeks earlier than the earliest varieties of carrots for spring sowing ripen. In addition, sowing before winter will make spring work easier for you, freeing up a lot of time, which is so lacking at the beginning of the growing season. If you have never sown vegetables before winter, then it is better to start the first sowing with carrots.
When to sow carrots before winter (in autumn)
Planting carrot seeds in the ground before winter is carried out under certain conditions. The time for planting carrots depends on the climate of the area and on the autumn weather. For your efforts to be successful, sow carrots only when persistent cold sets in and the average daily temperature is kept between 0-2 degrees C.
Preparing seeds for sowing carrots before winter
Planting carrots in open ground begins with the purchase of seed. What varieties of carrots are best sown before winter? Early varieties are suitable for this purpose, for example, Vitaminnaya-6, Shantane-2461, Losinoostrovskaya-13, Moscow Winter A-545, Nantes-4 or Incomparable. For autumn sowing, you will need a quarter more seeds than for spring sowing (seeds glued to tape or coated are not suitable). Choose plain fresh seeds that have not been pre-treated.
How to sow carrot seeds before winter
A bed for autumn sowing must be prepared in advance, before the cold weather. The soil needs to be dug up and grooves 3 cm deep must be made. Separately, you need to prepare dry soil with compost in bags for sealing grooves. Bags of soil and fertilizers are best stored in a warm barn.
To sow carrot seeds before winterit is necessary when the soil freezes by 5-8 cm. Even if snow falls by that time, it’s okay to clear the bed of snow, sow dry carrot seeds in the grooves, cover them with dry earth, mulch the area with a layer of harvested organic matter 3-4 cm thick (grass, leaves, compost), compact it so that the mulch is not blown by the wind, and again cover the bed with snow.
Caring for carrots after planting in autumn
If the snow has not yet fallen by the time the seeds are sown, cover the bed with mulch with spruce or pine branches or agrofibre, but do not forget that after the first snowfall, you need to throw a little snow on the garden. In the spring, when the snow begins to melt, remove the shelter, and if too much snow has fallen, then part of the snow so that it melts faster. To speed up the germination of seeds, cover the bed with a greenhouse. The greenhouse can be removed from the garden in May.
