GARDENING Carrots 3, Cauliflower 1

Rainbow carrots

Carrots 3, Cauliflower 1


Growing
Hans Wieland

Cauliflower, supposedly the Vegetable of the Year, gets a VSR (value for space rating) of just one out of a possible four stars from garden guru Joy Larkcom. Another gardener and author, Mark Diacono, writes ‘cauliflowers conspire to reach their fleeting instant of perfection between immaturity and past-their-best while you are out of sight for half a minute making a coffee’. Charles Dowding calls them a ‘feast or famine vegetable’, and Klaus Laitenberger says ‘they are one of the more difficult vegetables to grow’.
Gardeners and growers find this particular Brassica variety a challenge to say the least, so who decided to call it the vegetable of the year in the first place?!
I decided long ago not to bother, as I find other vegetables much more rewarding to grow in my garden. I leave the cauliflowers to the more commercial growers and buy them at my local farmers market. Yes, I do buy them, because my wife, Gaby, makes the most amazing raw-food pizza base with cauliflower.

Fancy carrots
So, I want to channel your energy into the more-rewarding world of growing carrots – not just ordinary carrots, but ‘fancy’ carrots. You don’t need to be a fan of Jimi Hendrix to be amazed by Purple Haze.
Like many other vegetables, carrot varieties can be divided into early, main-crop, and storage varieties and I usually concentrate on early varieties. If you have a polytunnel, growing carrots becomes a whole lot easier, as you will encounter less pests, diseases and competition of weeds.
They also come in several types that vary in shape and size, as well as a range of colours, from the classic deep orange to purple, white, yellow and red.
I find that outdoors, Nantes varieties are usually easier to grow, as they perform better in heavier, rockier soils where other carrot types twist and fork. Autumn King and Amsterdam types are very suitable for forcing in a polytunnel, and I try to grow them nearly all year round with successional sowings. I have also tried Mini and Radish-style carrots.
This year I am growing Amsterdam Forcing, Bambino, Yellowstone, Rainbow Mix, Cosmic Purple and Purple Haze in my garden. Most of them are early varieties, maturing in and around 60-70 days.

How to grow carrots
I know that growing carrots is a challenge as well, as they are slow to germinate and later on have to be thinned out and generally need good fertile, deep and loose soil with good drainage. Stoney soil and fresh manure in beds will lead to forking! Sow direct in drills of seed compost and mix in a few quick-growing radish seeds to mark the rows. Make your own seed band using toilet paper and space the seeds to avoid thinning out later!
Start sowing outdoors when the soil is reasonably warm. Water gently with a watering can, with a fine rose, to avoid washing seeds away. Keep the soil moist for best germination. Once plants are established there is no need for watering except in really dry spells. In the polytunnel make sure to keep the soil moist.
Problems: The biggest threats to carrots is the carrot root fly, which I have named the carrot root hopper, as it doesn’t fly. It can be barred from your bed by a netting about two-feet high. Alternatively, you can cover your crop with bionet or carrot fly netting.
Carrots get a VSR of three stars by Joy Larkcom. So the choice is yours: Cauliflower or Carrots, what will it be? Keep me posted!

Hans Wieland is training manager at The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim, which offers courses, training and information on organic growing and cooking, and runs an Eco Shop and an online gardening store. For more information, visit www.theorganiccentre.ie.
Gardening questions or comments? Contact Hans at living@mayonews.ie.