Planting Pelleted Carrots in the Vegetable Garden

Preparing the Garden Area

To begin planting pelleted carrots in the high tunnel greenhouse Greg must first prepare the garden area. The first step in preparing the garden for planting pelleted carrots is to use the Oscillating attachment on the Wheel Hoe to work the garden soil. Then, after working the soil we laid out compost exactly where we are planning to plant in the greenhouse. Greg mentions that we do not add compost to the entire area because we want to avoid weeds growing up in the walkways and we save compost by only applying it where it is needed. Once we work the compost in the soil we are ready to add drip tape to the garden soil. Since we are planting the pelleted carrots in the high tunnel greenhouse the only way to provide irrigation to the roots is through drip tape. Drip irrigation allows for the plants to be fed with water directly to the plant roots where it is needed the most for growth and allows you to conserve water. Another benefit of using drip irrigation is it allows us to plant crops on a double row spacing. When planting on a double row spacing we can get more plants planted in a row and more production of crops available for harvesting.

Setting Up Drip Irrigation

Greg has the drip irrigation kit which comes with a filter regulator combo that he is going to place in the middle of his five rows. It is highly recommended to place the regulator combo in the middle of your row in order to have an equal amount of volume and pressure coming out of either side. Then, he will take his mainline tee and attach it to the brass fitting of the regulator combo in order to connect two separate lines of drip tape on either side. In the greenhouse, Greg has the rows spaced 4 feet apart and is going to use where he placed the compost as a line to lay the drip tape along the row. For root crops, like carrots, there is no need to make a furrow and bury the drip tape deeper in the area. Greg will just lay the drip tape using the drip tape layer attachment right on top of the soil and mound up the soil with the plows attachment behind it and cover it up just a little bit. Once the drip tape is laid in the rows we take our mainline tubing and lay it along the border of the garden to feed the individual drip tape rows. We will also add our drip tape row starts to the mainline tubing to connect the individual tape in the greenhouse.

Planting Pelleted Carrots

Greg is going to plant a couple of different varieties of pelleted carrots such as Purple Haze, Romance, and Rainbow. With pelleted seeds, we highly recommend using our Hoss Garden Seeder to make planting quick and easy in the greenhouse. Since we are planting in the high tunnel greenhouse, Greg wants to plant the pelleted carrots thick and a little over 2 inches apart. Using the garden seeder allows us to customize the seed plates to fit the pelleted carrots perfectly for planting. Once the garden is prepared and the seed plates have been adjusted for the garden seeder we are able to plant the pelleted carrots in the greenhouse. When planting, Greg will plant the carrots around 5 to 6 inches away from the drip tape on each side. Overall, pelleted carrots are easy to grow and store well after harvesting from the garden.