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Take That, Carrot Rust Fly!

When I went to de-blight the tomatoes at the community garden plot this morning, I noticed a carrot top & greens of what was most likely one of my prized multicoloured carrots (pulled and eaten by a yet another vegetable thief) which made me think, “Hey, my carrots are ready!”  While the greens sure didn’t look like much, I decided to pull them anyway and to my delight, beautiful red, purple, white, and orange carrot with no sign of carrot rust fly damage.   Booya!

 

 

Back in April I pulled up my winter carrots and sadly, I lost the battle to that wily carrot rust fly.  This year I planted a summer crop, planted each seed individually spaced (painstakingly), mixed lots of sand in the soil and watered well.  Oh, and the most important thing: full sun.  My home garden is so crowded and lush that there just isn’t the sun there is at my new garden plot.  This, I’ve noticed, had made all the difference in the world to my vegetable gardening.  6-8 hours of direct sun just isn’t enough.

So here they are, some lovely purple carrot sticks, without a rusty track to be seen.  Take that, carrot rust fly. 

 

 

Me: 1 ; Carrot Rust Fly: 1

August 14 2010 | Community Garden and Growing Food and Harvest | 12 Comments »

How to Grow Carrots

Well don’t ask me.  This is what my carrots looked like this year: riddled with tracks from the disgusting, putrid, foul, menacing carrot rust fly. Those little buggers can sniff out a carrot with superhero powers so I planted carefully and didn’t have to thin them (thinning releases the smell and attracts the flies), but the females still found my carrot patch, layed eggs and a week later the larva fed on the hidden roots.  Bummer.

Clearly I’m not doing well at all in the carrot department but there is a wonderful set of posts by Abby Palmer at Green Slate who has written 2 helpful carrot posts: 18 Carrot Gold: The Secret of my Carrot Success  and A Carrot For All Seasons .  I’m going to give them another shot this year so I’ll be following her advice to the letter.  The only exception is that Abby suggests using seed tape but my beloved red and purple carrots only come in seeds packets so I’m sticking with old school loose seeds.  The carrots this year are in a new location and will have a row cover to keep those vile, hated, stupid flies out.  Any other suggestions are appreciated and thanks, Abby, for your wisdom.

Me: 0 ; Carrot Rust Fly: 1

April 17 2010 | Gardening and Growing Food and Projects | 14 Comments »