Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Kevin here with Epic Gardening. Today we're going to talk about some problems with growing carrots because John wrote in and said that he's having some issues in his root crop bed with his carrots and it's common. Carrots are a difficult plant to grow for most people but fortunately

there are a few easy things that you can do to mitigate

some of those problems that you're going to run into.

The number one problem that people have is that their carrots just don't even germinate in the first place.

This is a tip that I learned from my friend Stephen Cornette.

He runs a farm called Nature's Always Right,

and he was having problems with growing carrots as well,

specifically getting them to germinate.

And he runs a market garden, so it's very important that his carrots both germinate and

grow very healthfully because he's selling those. That's what he lives off of, right?

Here's what he said.

Carrots need even moist soil until the seedlings emerge and the soil should never be allowed to dry out.

So protect your plants by covering that soil,

maybe with a tarp or with a sheet of some sort

until they germinate.

And that's gonna keep that soil nice and moist

and not allow it to dry out

so that those delicate carrot seeds actually do germinate.

The next problem you may run into is that your seedlings will rot or they will collapse

and that's called damping off and that's due to a fungus that lives in the soil. The reason that happens typically is

that humidity is pretty high. So cold and moist soil is going to be the most susceptible to damping off disease.

Make sure your soil drains well, but again, make sure that it doesn't dry out too

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