Most vegetable gardens are thriving at the moment due to the hot sunny days, which makes July the perfect time to begin planting carrots. Carrots are very simple to grow, but they often die as one of the biggest mistakes gardeners make is overcrowding the soil, so the vegetables have no room to grow properly. 

Jill McSheehy, a gardener and founder of The Beginner’s Garden, has shared that carrot seeds are tiny, which makes it really common for gardeners to sow them too close together. She said: “It’s difficult to achieve proper plant spacing upon sowing seeds because they are so small. Even long-time gardeners can get a little heavy-handed with the sowing.”

When carrots seeds are too close together their roots have no chance to expand, so you are more likely to get small shrivelled carrots that do not taste as good as they should. 

It also means the carrots have to compete with each other for nutrients, water and sunlight, which can cause them to not even grow at all.

However, you do not need to worry as it is easy to grow carrots and make sure you do not overcrowd the soil as long as you thin out the sprout. 

Jill said: “If we don’t, the carrots will compete with one another and they will be drastically smaller. I’ve seen this in my own harvest. Trust me on this one. Two tiny 4″ carrots (10 centimetres) don’t compare to a meaty 8″ (20 centimetres) root.” 

This is a simple gardening technique, as all you need to do is wait for the seedlings to grow a little, then pull out or snip any plants too close together. 

How to thin carrot sprouts 

After planting your carrots, wait two to three weeks when you should see some small carrots tops clustered together, that should look a little like parsley leaves 

Then use a pair of scissors to snip the sprouts at the base so there is plenty of space between the plants. You can use your fingers if wish to pull them out but it tends to be easier to use scissors. 

You need there to be at least five centimeters of space between each carrot for them to grow properly into a fully-sized crop. 

After thinning out the seedlings, give them a good watering to settle the soil and keep the rest of the carrots healthy. 

Jill said: “When you take the time to do this, you’ll likely have some of the biggest carrots you’ve ever harvested.”