I have, as usual, been thinking about the upcoming season with the gardening club. I’m not sure if I do nothing but think or if my mind just regularly drifts off to the club. Truthfully, it’s both; I’m so worried about making a “wrong” purchase I put a lot of thought into, plus I am super excited about the growing season.
We only have three raised beds, a herb bed, a strip of poor soil near a fence and one-and-half grow houses (one large and one small). Written like that it sounds like quite a lot. Let 15 children on it and it seems minuscule.
So, to maximise space and to make this year a Good Year for veggies (last year wasn’t for lots of reasons) I’ve decided we’ll grow all our carrots in containers. That way we will have full control over the soil conditions and carrot fly will hopefully be thwarted.
First though I shall have to source some large containers. Where from I haven’t yet discovered. I was promised some old wooden wine boxes but that came to nowt. Maybe I will actually dip into our meagre funds (I haven’t done so yet) and buy some large, plastic plant pots. Not as nice looking as the crates but with the advantage that they will actually be available.
Deciding which carrots to grow is a lot easier. Although we grew rainbow ones last year I was a bit disappointed. They weren’t so much Rainbow as Washed Out. So Purple Haze it is. I love these and feel sure the children will too.
Round carrots such as Parmex will also be grown. I think the children will delight in their golf ball shaped size. But, lest anyone thinks that I am going to corrupt young people into believing that carrots are anything but carrot shaped or orange, there will be a third batch of traditional carrots.
According to my latest gardening/food hero, Nigel Slater, carrots that have round ends found in supermarkets should be avoided. And I agree. Not much point, really, in growing something we can find in Tesco so the last lot of carrots shall be something like Autumn King or perhaps Chantenay.
He also recommends Violet - “scarlet flesh with violet skin” - which sound fab. Perhaps there shall be four pots of carrots. Perhaps we shall even do an experiment to see which produce the most. Perhaps (fingers crossed) this will be a good year for carrots.
on Feb 8th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Could you possibly source large pots from a nearby garden nursery?
on Feb 8th, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Hmmm…possibly. I am rather rubbish at “sourcing” things like that but I really do need to make our money stretch. Thanks for the nudge!
on Feb 8th, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Old car tyres work well - you can stack a few on top of each other to increase the height.
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 12:31 am
They aren’t very pretty but if there is a deli near you, you might be able to ask if they have any extra buckets. I worked at a bagel shop/ deli and we always had stacks and stacks of 5 gal white buckets (its what the pickles we used came in). The worst that happens by asking is they say no.
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 11:19 am
Must get some carrot seeds. Do you have a Morrisons supermarket near you Deb? Ours sells off the black buckets that they use for selling flowers in. Usually a pound for ten buckets but sometimes more in a batch
I use them for spring bulbs. May not suit carrots but you could still perhaps find a use for them. A friend has used the garden rubbish containers you can get from Poundland for growing spuds in. I think that she made some drainage holes. May only last for one season but at that price!
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
Another source of containers my Dad used more than once was florists, who used to provide him with fairly deep square plastic “buckets” to grow carrots in.
Or maybe the school kitchen has containers that their cooking oil/condiments etc arrives in?
“Pound shops” or similar would probably be a cheaper source of suitable containers than garden centres - or even ask the kids’ parents to donate old/unwanted large pots and containers?
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
never heard of parmex carrots- must try them! You can also use the galvanized steel trash cans that are corregated. They actually can look kind of cool to
I am using metal buckets with a strip of chalkboard paint, so I can write what is in the bucket on them. Very excited about this little project!
on Feb 10th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Thank you everyone for the wonderful ideas. There is a deli in town, I could pop in there. Ooh, and a pound shop now we no longer have Woollies.
Your helpful comments were just the kick up the pants I needed! Didn’t realise how uncreative I was being. Cheers!
on Feb 13th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
We’ve ’sourced’ excellent wooden crates from our local open market - and also by contacting removal firms and saying we’ll take tea chests that have got broken - you can cut them down easily to serve as reasonable sized raised beds. I have some concerns about tyres leaching chemicals into root crops - there have been some comments from organic gardeners in the USA that tyres might not be the best containers, so we’ve given up using ours.