Prep your beds for early carrots

We are preparing the ground for the first three outdoor crops, early onions(and garlic) to be planted the end of February, Carrots to be sown outdoors in early March, and 1st earlies to go in around mid to late March.

Carrots first;

last years container grown carrots

Do you remember me on about using the stale seed bed method, where we warm up the ground, and collect the first seasons weeds by putting clear plastic over a bed for a few weeks before sowing a crop? That's exactly what we are doing to prepare the ground for early carrots. The soil is still cold, you can test it by dropping your pants and resting your bare cheeks on it, can you stay there comfortably? or if you are a bit concerned that the neighbours might happen to look out the window, or worse appear at the garden gate at the fateful moment,(and think you were becoming a bit feral) you can use your elbow, and test the soil the same way to see how long you can comfortably hold your skin in contact with the soil. If you'd rather not use your arse or your elbow use your eyes instead- that is wait until you see weed seeds germinating in the soil then you know the soil temperature has risen enough to sow your early veggie seeds.

We did not choose a bed that had been planted with a green manure, rather we chose one that had been manured last year and had grown a crop already. Carrots don't like fresh manure, and hate heavy nitrogen, so we chose a bed with fine light soil, leaving the green manured beds for other purposes.There is a brilliant carrot website if you want to really get the lowdown on carrots,

http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/cultivation2.html

Garlic & Onions;
In the community garden the soil is particularly good, I am reliably informed it was a very productive school garden for years. Because of crop rotation garlic and onions slot in after brassicas. There is already a bed of overwintering onions and garlic in the brassica area from last year, right next to where we will plant the new garlic cloves and onion sets. These are growing really well considering they were sown in November. Once the last of the cabbage is harvested from the bed we will lightly weed it, aiming to get in the garlic and onions next week.

weeding the overwintering garlic and onions

Jack and his giant cabbages! thanks to mushroom compost

Spuds-1st earlies;
Spuds may be the trickiest thing to prepare the ground for. Its getting almost impossible to get good quality cow manure now thanks to slotted units and slurry tanks. Luckily one of the gang is on a farm, and thinks she will be able to supply us. Jacks mushroom compost is good but seems to be too limey, last years crop had a dose of scab. Its perfect for the brassicas though. A good link for growing spuds in Ireland is here;

http://www.garden.ie/howtogrow.aspx?id=1032