Easy Ways to Plant Carrot Seeds

Sweet, crunchy carrots are a delicious garden treat, but carrot seeds are tiny. This can make planting them laborious, tedious work. It's also hard not to waste seed by planting them too thickly. Fortunately, experienced gardeners have developed several methods of planting carrot seeds that make the job easier, and reduce the amount of seed wasted.

Prepare the soil. Loosen the dirt to ten inches or so, and remove any rocks that will get in the way and make your carrots fork. Fertilize as desired. Form ridges one to two feet apart, each ridge being 4-6 inches tall. Plant a double row of carrots along each ridge. Sow seeds ?"-?" deep, about twenty seeds per foot. The seeds should sprout in one to three weeks, and when they get two to four inches tall, you'll have to thin the plants to two inches apart. Add the tiny thinned carrots (and even the tops) to your salads.

Mix some radish seeds in with the carrot seeds. Radishes sprout quickly, marking your rows while you wait for the carrots to germinate. The radishes also break up the crusty soil surface, making it easier for the tiny carrot sprouts to come through.

Broadcast carrot seeds instead of planting in rows. Then thin to two inches apart as directed above.

Mix carrot seeds with dry sand to make it easier to spread them evenly in the rows.

Load the seeds into an old salt or pepper shaker, and shake them out into the dirt, in rows or broadcast.

Buy pelleted carrot seeds. Each seed is coated until it is four to five times bigger than a plain carrot seed. The white coating and larger size make it easier to precision plant your carrots, spacing them so that the need to thin is reduced or eliminated. Be forewarned, though, that pelleted seed is usually pre-prepped, meaning that it's been moistened and allowed to almost germinate, then dried again. This means the seed may only be good for this year, and won't keep for a couple of years as untreated seeds will.

Use a seeding tool. These are available for purchase from many seed and gardening supply catalogs, and come in an astonishing variety of designs. Some use suction, some vibration, and most have adjustable openings so you can use them for different kinds of seeds. These tools dispense seeds at a controlled rate, so that they are evenly spaced in your rows.

Purchase seed tapes. Carrot seeds are glued to strips of tissue paper, spaced properly, and need only to be laid in the garden and covered over. For a cheaper alternative, try making your own seed tape with toilet paper or newspaper (see Resources).