Growing Carrots in a Stock Tank

Remember last spring I talked about how we have begun building our kitchen garden? It’s going to be a long process but one of the things I wanted to do this year was try out various annual vegetable crops in small batches to find out if they would 1, do well in our limited sun growing conditions and 2, see if we liked that particular variety. You know, basically work out the kinks so down the road we could run a tight ship growing only what we like but on a larger scale.

So, in the carrot category, we tried this variety called ‘Nectar’ from Johnny’s Seeds. I went with pelleted seeds because it is SO MUCH EASIER to sow. Plop! Plop! Plop! In they went in neat little rows, staying right where I wanted them. In fact, I didn’t even have to thin these, something I hate doing. I sowed the seeds on somewhat weekly intervals so we can harvest in succession and marked the newest row with a bamboo stick running across the fence. (The fencing around the outside of the tank is to prevent our chickens and the squirrels from digging in there.)

With our garden having very limited areas that receive full sun, we knew we would need to grow many of our annuals veggies in containers. Stock tanks work so well in this regard. The one shown here is a 38 gallon size. This is fairly shallow so best suited for shorter carrots. The mister drilled 3/8″ holes in the bottom of the tanks for good drainage and then we lined the inside with some landscape fabric. The soil was a pre-made compost based growing mix we have delivered in spring which we use on our new beds. I’ve had this mix tested and it runs close to a neutral pH with enough nutrients that no additional fertilizing was used outside of an occasional fish emulsion soil drench.

These carrots were delicious and ones I would definitely grow again! We ate this first batch roasted with some potatoes and they were very tasty. Next week’s harvest, maybe a stir fry. Do you grow carrots? Do you have a favorite variety?