The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

the best fertilizers for carrots

12.6 years ago carrot, fertilizer, guest post 3 Comments

Most of the gardeners love to grow carrots because of the low-maintenance efforts. However, you need to pay some attention one week after sowing the seeds. Carrots need some specific soil conditions in order to be healthy and tasteful. Therefore, before sowing the seeds and also after the seed germination, you need to check the soil to see if it is proper for the healthy growth of the plant. A light sandy soil with lots of potassium and some amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and other micronutrients works best of carrots. So, a soil test is necessary before you plant your carrots, so that you can add the nutrients that are deficient in the soil. Some of the fertilizers that are most suitable for carrots are:

Potash

Potash is a fertilizer that provides potassium. Carrots need a lot of potassium for their growth. If your soil is deficient in potassium, you need to add potash in it. Potassium helps carrot plants in their photosynthesis, water as well as nutrient transport and also plant cooling. Deficiency of potassium can make the leaves to curl and their margins will have a burnt look. Stems also become abnormally short and stunted. Alkaline soil, however, does not require a lot of potassium, but if you have an acidic soil, add potash to make it alkaline before you sow the carrot seeds.

Kelp

Kelp enriches the soil with micronutrients such as calcium, magnesium and boron. These are required by the plant for chlorophyll production. If your soil has a micronutrient deficiency, you need to add kelp. Calcium deficiency can cause stems to collapse and leaves to wither off. Less magnesium can lead to yellowing of the leaves. Carrots with boron deficiency have leaves that have a rosette pattern and they usually turn orange when they grow old. So, to help your carrot plants to grow better, nourish the soil with kelp. Avoid overuse of this fertilizer, as it causes the carrots to become fibrous.

NPK fertilizers

Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are the three main macronutrients that are required by the carrot plants. Before sowing your seeds, make sure that your soil has a proper percentage of these macronutrients. These nutrients help in photosynthesis, proper root and leaf formation and the overall development of the plant. Their deficiency can lead to pale leaves and stunted plants that can die soon. NPK fertilizers release all the three nutrients and make it suitable for the growth of carrots. This fertilizer can be added to the soil 30 days after the germination of the seeds. For carrot plants, the amount of nitrogen in the fertilizer should be less than potassium and phosphorus. NPK fertilizer with 1-2-2 label can be perfect. Carrot is a root plant and too much of nitrogen can enhance the growth of leaves and make the carrots hairy and cracked. However, take care not to even overuse phosphorus, as it leads to water pollution.

Therefore, before planting carrots, ensure that your soil has all the nutrients required for the proper growth of the plant. If there is a deficiency, add fertilizers. With little care, you can enjoy tasty, healthy and nutritious homegrown carrots, which are far better than the carrots you find in the market. Always avoid over-fertilization, as this might ruin the flavor of the carrots. Remember to water your plants properly after you add fertilizers.

About The Author: Alia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and Designer Rugs. Beside this she is very particular about her fitness and exercise daily to stay in shape. She frequently writes articles related to plastic pollution for her blog Ecofriend.

Make your own supplemental LED grow light

15.5 years ago cheap, indoor growbox, LEDs 7 Comments

I never got a round to making a hydroponic system out of my Cafe Steamer, but I did use part of it to create a supplemental red LED light.  The construction of this was very easy and you can do the same thing with an old string of LED Christmas lights and some soft plastic (margarine or frozen dinner container) from your recycling bin.

Take the plastic and drill evenly spaced holes through the plastic.  Make sure to do a few test holes with a few different bits to determine which will allow a snug fit but not causing you to force/break the bulbs.  Once all the holes are drilled, carefully slide in all the bulbs, plug it in, and your project is done.

I am adding this one to my computerized grow box as a little supplemental light for my peppers plants, which I am planning on growing completely indoors this year.

Controlling my growbox with a mobile phone

14 years ago computer, electronics, indoor growbox, Uncategorized, windows phone 14 Comments

How many times have you been riding the bus and have been curious what temperature your computer growbox was running and if the plants needed to be watered?  Ok maybe never, but I decided to solve this problem anyway.  There is also no point in identifying that you may have a problem without having a way to do something about so I also implemented the ability to override the controls on the growbox by using a Windows Phone 7 application on your new T-Mobile cell phone or any other cool Windows phone.

Design

I made the design for this pretty simple, unfortunately I could not connect with my growbox directly using a mobile device because the computer is behind a firewall (which is a good thing) so I used machine that both the mobile phone and growbox can contact cheapvegetablegardener.com.  After creating a quick web service with the following methods the growbox and mobile device could now talk to each other:

• SetStatus(StatusInfo) – GrowBox sets this status every minute
• SetOverride(OverrideInfo) – Mobile sets override to default functionality
• GetStatus() – Mobile Phone gets status
• GetOverride() – GrowBox checks for potential overrides requested by Mobile device

Mobile UI

Now I have the two devices talking here is the basic UI.  The top half of the screen shows the growbox temperature, cpu temperature, and the moisture content. All of these statues change color (to yellow and red) as their values get to critical levels (too hot, too cold, too dry)

The middle section shows the current state of the growbox letting me know if the lights, heater, exhaust fan, and/or water pump are on or off.  If a situation occurs where you want to override this state you can do this by simply clicking the status indicator.

The bottom part of the screen shows temperature and moisture levels over the past 24 hours.  The graphs are rendered using Google Charts for simplicity though am thinking about creating my own custom solution to get the graphs just right.  It also displays a current screenshot inside the grow box and you can transition between views with a finger swipe.

Screenshots

Temperature history graph	Moisture saturation history graph
Overriding the heater setting	Status screen following heater override

Though this covers most of my required functionality, I still need to add some cool transition animations and some additional analytics, but thought I would share my current version.

New site design

15.6 years ago Uncategorized 4 Comments

If you have visited us before, you may notice some changes to the site design.  Felt things were getting cluttered, so did a little spring cleaning.  We have a little more tweaking to do but I am getting used to the lighter feel.  What do you think?

New way to use egg cartons for starting seeds

10.6 years ago cheap, indoor seed starting, planter, seedling 2 Comments

I have used egg cartons to plant seedlings before but here is a slight twist, instead of taking the whole lid off I cut the top off the lid.  This not only gives you a neat place to label your seeds but more importantly, it provides an extra inch of depth for your seedlings to get a running start before being transplanted to your garden.

Deterring mystery pest from eating my tomatoes: New Updates

13.1 years ago organic, pests, tomato 9 Comments

This is not the first time visitors have stolen tomatoes from my garden, but this year the mystery pest has gotten every ripe tomato I have grown this year, which given out cold/wet summer has only been about a dozen ripe tomatoes.  I normally go with the philosophy of this land is owned by my neighborhood animals first and I am fine sharing a tomato, some lettuce, and a few blueberries, but with the end of the season coming closer and less tomatoes left on the vines…I am going to war with the hungry critter.

This evening I applied a liberal amount of Critter Ridder from Havahart following the directions on the packaging.  Instead of trying to describe the product I will defer to marketing material to describe products I use since that is what they get paid the big bucks for.

This powerful combination of active, all-natural ingredients work together to irritate the animal immediately if it smells, tastes or touches the product. This unpleasant experience drives the animal away unharmed but unwilling to return to the treated area. 

Our patented formula effectively repels groundhogs, skunks, dogs, cats, squirrels, raccoons, chipmunks and other nuisance animals.

So hoping my pest happens to one of the animals that hates the stuff.   I applied this per the directions around my tomato beds and the lawn surrounding the bed.  For good measure I also applied a little on a tomato they were too full to finish on their last visit.  From previous observations I have found they are good about cleaning on the previous nights meal.  Given the active ingredients contain black pepper oil and capsaicin (what makes peppers hot) given we are the only known species that will voluntarily eat these spices pretty sure the animal will not appreciate my seasoning of their leftovers from the previous night.

To once and for all confirm the pest I am dealing with I have setup my OutbackCam night camera to catch any returning visitors on film…hopefully I only catch them once after they have a taste of my spicy tomato I cooked up for them.

Nightly Updates

Night #1: Mystery pest returned, though moved the tomatoes around but did not eat much of his leftovers.  Was a bit of a ninja and not captured on camera.

Night #2: Again the mystery pest returned and ate a little more but again did not trigger a picture

Night #3: Got a picture triggered but mystery pest must have some sort of invisibility cloak on because I do not see it in the picture.  Planning on moving the camera back a little farther from the fence (or possibly turn on an outside light) since the IR LEDs seem to a little intense at that distance.  Again the pest played with the tomatoes but didn’t seem to eat much (if any) and has not bothered any of the other tomatoes in the vine.