The best varieties of carrots

Varieties canteen carrots divided by ripening time into early ripening, mid-ripening and late maturing... The timing is determined from germination to technical ripeness.

When choosing delicious varieties of carrots in the store, you should be guided by the mark “excellent taste” or “very good taste”.

But to choose the best variety for your site, several factors should be taken into account:

• soil quality... Long-fruited varieties can be planted in light, loose varieties; in heavy clay, it is better to plant short-fruited carrots;
• ripening time... The earliest ripening varieties are short-fruited;
• yield... Externally interesting varieties round fruit carrots grow quickly, but do not differ in yield;
• commercial purposes... If carrots are grown for sale, it is better to take imported beautiful varieties, although they do not taste as good as domestic ones. For yourself, it is better to take domestic ones, which are better adapted to local conditions, and even sweeter.
• color... White, red, black, purple, yellow, orange, pink, burgundy and even green. Today you can find carrots of almost any color. Each has its own interesting features.

What varieties of carrots are better to plant, it is up to the owner of the suburban area to decide.

Most often, early ripening carrot varieties are characterized by juiciness, but a lower content of saccharides than in mid- and late-ripening varieties, as well as the inability to withstand long-term storage. But they take the timing when you really want a fresh young carrot.

The best varieties of early ripening carrots

Variety Alenka

High-yielding early ripening variety... It takes only 50 days to ripen for bundled products. Fruits are not very long, up to a maximum of 12 cm. Root weight up to 100 g. Saccharides 5.4-8.5%, carotene up to 13.5%. This variety does not taste as sweet as the late varieties, but it has a lot of moisture.

Choosing which early ripe carrot variety will be suitable for heavy soil, you can pay attention to the time-tested Karotel.

Variety Carotel Parisian

The best early maturing carrot variety, capable of growing in heavy clay soils. The average ripening period is about 72 days. Root vegetables up to 5 cm in diameter and weighing up to 60 g. Contains a large amount of saccharides and carotene. Because of the delicate pulp and high sweetness, it is very popular with children. Suitable for both fresh consumption and preservation and freezing. Unfortunately, it is unsuitable for long storage, as it is prone to cracking.

The best varieties of mid-season carrots

It is easy to get confused about mid-ripening carrot varieties, as their selection is very wide and all are advertised as the best. Such varieties as Nantes 4 and Vitaminnaya 6 are widely known. But many other varieties of domestic selection are not inferior to these varieties.

Variety Losinoostrovskaya 13

Old and popular gardeners have a variety. Recommended for breeding almost all over Russia. It was bred back in the USSR as a frost-resistant variety, which makes it possible to grow it even in those regions where summer is shorter than the time required for this variety to ripen (on average 110 days). The variety can withstand frosts down to -4 ° C.

The length of the root crop is more than 15 cm with a weight of up to 115 g.The color is bright orange, which indicates an increased content of carotene: 18.5 mg / 100 g. The yield of the variety is very high, up to 7.5 kg / m².

Variety Moscow winter a 515

The once almost forgotten variety has returned to its positions today, and producers even began to offer Moscow winter seeds on a belt, which greatly facilitates planting these carrots.

The variety is mid-season. It can be sown before winter. With winter crops, it is suitable for collecting bundled products 10 days earlier than Nantes. Fruits up to 16 cm and weighing up to 170 g. Root crop of bright orange color. Productivity up to 7 kg / m².

The variety is intended for cultivation almost all over Russia. It is good not only for winter crops. Shows a good result when sowing in April-May. The best of those intended for fresh consumption in winter. Possesses high keeping quality.

The best varieties of late-ripening carrots

Variety Queen of Autumn

Late-ripening, relatively young variety. Included in the State Register in 2005. The variety is recommended for the Middle Strip and the Far East region. It takes 125 days to mature.

Root crops are large, but vary greatly in size (20-30 cm). Weight 80-230 g. The shape of the roots is conical, with a slightly pointed tip. The color of the flesh is rich orange almost red. The variety is very productive. Yields up to 9 kg / m².

It is not particularly sweet. Content of saccharides up to 11%, carotene up to 17 mg. Perfect for long-term storage while preserving its taste.

Variety Red giant

A late-ripening variety of carrots with beautiful, even roots about 25 cm long, which take 150 days to ripen. Dark orange roots with carotene content up to 15 mg / 100 g. Excellent for long-term storage and fresh consumption.

Testimonials

If grown incorrectly, it is impossible to get high-quality carrots, which will show all the properties declared by the manufacturer. The best carrots are obtained with the use of competent agricultural technology.

Agrotechnics

Choosing a place for landing

Carrots love direct sunlight, so a place with the maximum duration of being under the sun is chosen for it. In the shade, the yield and taste of root crops decrease.

The best precursors for carrots are nightshades, cabbage, cucumber, garlic, and onions.

Preparing the beds

To obtain high-quality carrots, the soil for crops must be prepared to a depth of 25 cm. For growing carrots, ridges are made to increase the height of the fertile soil. If you remember that some varieties of carrots can grow over 20 cm in length, you should not be lazy. The root crop should have room for growth, then it will not bend and the output will be a beautiful, even carrot.

The combs are made at a distance of 0.6 m from each other. The tops are leveled so that a bed 0.3 m wide is obtained.

You do not need to pre-fertilize, feeding the plantings later.

Seed preparation for sowing

In order not to waste energy and sown area, it is better to prepare the seeds for sowing. The preparation will reveal empty seeds and accelerate the germination of good ones. No effort is needed here. The seeds are simply poured with warm water and left for 10 hours, after which the dummies floating on the surface are caught and thrown away.

The remaining high-quality seeds are placed on a damp cloth for several days, maintaining a temperature of + 20-24 ° C. The seeds will hatch after 3 days.

Video how to prepare seeds and plant carrots

Sowing

On the prepared beds, grooves are made 3 cm deep and carrot seeds are placed in pairs at a distance of 2 cm in them and sprinkled with soil 1.5 cm thick.You can simply sprinkle the seeds along the top of the ridge, sprinkling them with soil. No more than 60 g of seeds are sown per 1 m².

For the summer season of 2019, the manufacturer offers a novelty: carrot seeds already prepared for planting on paper tape or in a gel dragee.

When planting on paper, the tape is placed in the grooves with an edge and sprinkled with earth. All other preparatory and subsequent manipulations are carried out according to the standard scheme. The only exception is that the seeds are already glued to the paper at a distance of 5 cm and do not require weeding in the future.

There is also a nuance here. Experienced gardeners believe that rarely planted carrots become too large and coarse. That is why the seeds are initially planted at a distance of 2 cm and then weeded, increasing the distance between the roots to 6 cm after the second weeding.

You can stick any small seeds on toilet paper yourself at home in winter. But the process takes a lot of time and requires high perseverance and accuracy.

When watering, the gel absorbs water in a certain amount. The excess water will pass by the seed. Thus, the gel protects the seed from rotting. At the same time, with a lack of water in the soil, the gel gradually gives the seed the water that it absorbed during watering, and the seed does not dry out.

When planting gel pills, the carrot seeds are laid out in the grooves at the usual distance of 2 cm. The seeds covered with earth are watered very well. After that, you can forget about watering for 2 weeks. Further manipulations with crops are carried out according to the standard scheme.

Carrot care

Seeds germinate for a long time, and young plants grow no faster. Sometimes the first weeding may be required even before the shoots emerge. Carrot seeds germinate without preliminary treatment for 40 days, and weeds have time to grow on the sowing site, which will need to be weeded out. Weeds very badly affect the development of carrots.

If there were no weeds, then the first time the crops of carrots are weeded, more precisely, they are thinned out, fourteen days after the emergence of shoots. After thinning, the distance between the plants remains 3 cm. If the seeds were planted sparsely, there is no need for the first thinning. After the appearance of the first two pairs of leaves, the carrots are weeded again, increasing the distance between the plants twice.

Fertilizers and watering

To get high-quality carrots, you have to take special care that they do not need water. With a lack of water, carrots become lethargic and bitter. The soil should be moistened for the entire length of the root crop. Adult carrots are watered so that the water soaks a 30 cm layer of soil.

If the summer is hot, and you are at the dacha, you do not need to pour a lot of water at once on the dry beds. The carrots will crack and become unusable. It is better to start with 3 liters per m², water again every other day at the rate of 6 liters per meter. Further, depending on the weather.

Unlike many other garden crops, carrots do not need a significant amount of nitrogen, for this reason, the main fertilizer that is used for feeding it is potassium-phosphorus.

A month after germination, the carrots are fed for the first time, the second - after two. It is rather difficult to calculate the required amount of solid fertilizers, so it is most convenient to feed root crops with liquid fertilizers. One of three feeding options is added to a bucket of water:

• 1 tbsp. l. nitrophosphate;
• 2 glasses of ash;
• potassium nitrate 20 g, double superphosphate and urea 15 g each.

Video how to grow a good harvest:

Diseases and pests

In general, carrots rarely get sick. Its main problems are three: alternaria, phomosis and carrot fly.

Alternaria

Carrots affected by this fungus must not be stored. During the period of being in the ground, a sign of plant damage is blackening and dying off of the lower part of the leaves. The leaves themselves turn yellow.

The fight against the disease consists in observing the crop rotation (the carrots are returned to their original place after 4 years), dressing the seeds before planting and spraying the plants with Bordeaux mixture.

All post-harvest residues must be destroyed, and the carrot storage facilities must be disinfected with formalin or whitewash.

Fomoz

For carrots of the first year of sowing, it is not dangerous. It begins to develop on root crops laid for storage. But when planting a root crop to get seeds, the carrots either die, or the bush grows weak and gives fewer seeds.

The main danger of phomosis is that the seeds obtained from an infected root crop will also be infected.

It cannot be treated, only preventive measures are possible:

• crop rotation;
• careful sorting before storage with the removal of all questionable and infected root crops;
• disinfection of the storage facility and keeping the temperature in it for storing carrots at 1-2 ° C;
• obligatory seed dressing or the use of seed from healthy plants.

If you sow carrots from purchased seeds every year, the risk of infection from the seed is minimal, but it should be borne in mind that phomosis is also well preserved in plant residues, so the post-harvest parts of plants must be destroyed.

Carrot fly

A parasite whose larvae are capable of destroying the entire carrot crop. What is just not invented to protect against this pest.

One of the main ways of prevention is not to plant carrots in low-lying or shady areas. The fly does not like the sun and the wind. To scare it away, carrots are sown interspersed with garlic, onions or tomatoes. There is also an additional benefit in this, since carrots, in turn, scare off the pest of onions and garlic - the onion fly.

Marigolds and calendula, sown around the perimeter of the carrot bed, attract the enemies of the carrot fly. It is also necessary to monitor the density of plantings, thinning the carrots in time. In ventilated crops, the fly also does not like to settle.

You can drown out the carrot smell with an infusion of pepper and mustard. You can also add them to the soil when loosening the soil. The fly does not tolerate peat crumbs, so you can fill the aisles with it.

The video shows another interesting way to combat this pest:

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