Planting carrot seeds is usually not a very easy task in the vegetable garden. The very tiny carrot seeds are very difficult to handle making seed sowing a pain in the patoot. A very clever way of making this task much easier is by using seed tapes for sowing carrot seeds. Seed tapes can be easily made yourself or some can be purchased already filled with seed. You can usually find seed tapes for carrots and lettuces among other vegetables in most garden centers. If you are interested in using seed tapes to plant carrots, and other tiny seeds, here is how I planted carrots in a raised bed using seed tapes.

Create A Trench For The Seed Tapes

Since it is best to sow carrots directly in the garden, the first thing you want to do using seed tapes is to prepare the bed. You can grow carrots in hills or in a raised bed. Remember, carrots grow quite long so you want to loosen the soil at least 6 to 8 inches deep. I prefer growing them in a raised bed that is at least 12 inches deep, filled with loose, fertile soil and amended with good compost.

The raised bed I'm growing these carrots in is 4 feet by 4 feet and about 18 inches deep. It was a compost bin that I converted over to a growing bed a couple years ago. I use it to grow vegetables such as carrots, turnips or potatoes.

Once you have the bed ready to plant, take your hand or a trowel, and create trenches about 1/2-inch deep and 10 inches apart. The trench is where you will be laying out your seed tape filled with carrot seeds.

planting carrots using seed tapes1


Lay The Seed Tapes Into The Trenches

Once you have the trenches created, it is now time to lay the seed tapes into the trenches. Simply pull the seed tape into the trench to get a quick measure of how long the seed tape needs to be. I like to leave about 3 to 4 inches of space on each end of the raised bed side to accommodate the growth of the carrots on the ends.

lay seed tapes into each trench


Just tear the seed tape off on the end and repeat the process until each trench has a seed tape.

finish laying seed tapes in each trench


Cover The Seed Tapes With Soil

Now that the seed tapes are placed into the trenches, it is time to cover the seed tapes with soil. Take your hand and cover the seed tapes with about 1/2-inch of soil. I just take my hand and lightly cover the seed tapes with the soil from creating the trenches until all the seed tapes are covered.

cover seed tapes with half inch of soil


Now Water The Bed

Once the seed tapes are covered with soil, water the raised bed well and continue to keep the soil moist for seed germination. Do not water so much the soil becomes soggy. You want it to stay consistently moist, and do not allow the soil to dry out. Typically, watering the bed once a day should suffice.

After about a week, you will start to see tiny carrot tops begin poking through the soil.

tiny carrot seedlings sprouting through soil


As you can see using seed tapes is much easier and quicker than trying to sow the tiny seeds by hand. If you do not typically like sowing tiny carrot seeds, give seed tapes a try. I think you'll really like working with them.

Do you use homemade or store-bought seed tapes in your garden? Please tell us about how you sow carrot seeds!

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