Herrick Kimball, author of “The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners” shares a quirky but very effective (and downright satisfying) way to get a bed of carrots off to a great start in black plastic using his tri-planting technique and shade discs.
The plastic helps retain moisture in the soil and also keeps weeds away, and the shade discs help to stop the soil from drying out, giving the emerging seedlings a better start. Using this method he’s able to germinate carrots in just 4 days.
The grow bed in this video is 30 inches wide and 16 foot long. With 73 tri-grown carrots (3 carrots in each planting pocket), the bed should produce 219 carrots. Here’s a very detailed explanation of the technique if you would like to try it out for yourself…
In this next video you’ll see how the carrots are thinned with scissors at 14 days, and the progression of growth from 6 days to 46 days…
In this video Herrick digs one tri-planting of carrots to show what they look like three months after planting. He also discusses the subject of watering the carrot beds…
In this video Herrick digs down through a lot of snow in February to harvest carrots that were planted seven months previously. Will the carrots be good enough to eat, and is it a good idea to store carrots in the garden? This video will answer those questions…
In this final video, Herrick discusses his experimental leaf-bag clamps for root-crop storage in the garden. Leaf-bag clamps are far easier to make than traditional earthen-mound clamps and, although this innovative idea is still in the experiment-and-evaluate stage of development, early results are downright exciting…
For more great gardening ideas like these, check out Herrick’s Whiz Bang Gardening Ideas Book here. If you like this idea, be sure to share it with your friends and inspire someone you know. Anything becomes possible with just a little inspiration…
