Summut wrong with me carrots!

Summut wrong with me carrots, foliage all limp an reddish, wots that then?.

 

Hi Albert, Sounds like the dreaded "Carrot Fly" it got all of mine last year.
This year I've taken belt braces and piece of string precautions and it seem to have worked.
I sowed 6 rows of carrots and a couple of rows of parsnips on a squarish plot, surrounded them with french marigolds, a row of garlic, paris pickling onions and a few onion sets. When they germinated I banked them and layed 20 x 20 rough cut laths painted with neat Jeyes fluid in between the rows. We are pulling carrots about 8" long and touch wood, no carrot fly.

I sould have said, carrot fly are attracted by smell, hence the precations. However, I have since learnt that carrot fly are poor flyers and that a barrier 24" high would have been good enough. Oh well, the marigolds look good!

Have a look at my blog, it's got a photo of my carrots somewhere on it!

Regards

BigT
http://brassicabill.blogspot.com

 

If it is carrot fly, once you've got it it can be a nuisance to get rid of, so I've read - if you don't want to go the Big T route then it might be best to rotate next year and grow something different (I'm told you should do this anyway, root one year, brassica the next, and something else the year after that).

I also read they're attracted by bruised foliage, so if you're weeding you need to get rid of the weeds and not leave them lying in the ground.

I grew carrots this year and got the grand total of four baby carrots in my plot, so I'm probably not the best person to take advice from however!

 

I've pulled em up, as the roots are full of holes, like lace work, another bloody disaster, is it ok to put them on the compost heap?

 

Definately not, the larvae of the carrot fly will hatch and lay dormant in your compost ready for next year. Best to burn them. If you have already composted them either sterilize the compost, a long and labourious job, or use the compost well away from any area you intend for future carrots.

You could still get a crop of baby carrots if you have anywhere to sow them away from the previous disaster area.

Regrads
BigT

 

Hi Albert,

I agree with the idea of using smell as a repellent but you don't neccessarily have to go to too much effort.

This year I grew alternate rows of shallots and carrots. I harvested the shallots I wanted to dry (they were much earlier than the carrots) but simply left loads to stay in between the carrot rows and it's worked a treat.

 

I grow mine in tall drainage pipes and dont get bothered at all or earth them up until early june.