Growing A Beginner Vegetable Garden: Part 1

I’m taking on a new challenge with my toddler, growing a beginner vegetable garden. Ok, lets be realistic, we are going to attempt to grow carrots. Orange, White and Purple carrots that he picked out at the local seed store. This seed store was the best source for seeds that I’ve located in my area. Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre is the place to visit for your gardening expertise and seeds. They also have an amazing coffee shop on site so having some espresso certainly helps me keep up with my toddler while shopping. The photos below show a sliver of what to expect when visiting. They also run gardening class, which I look forward to attending. Follow on their Facebook page to find updates on their calendar.

I’m keeping this challenge simple and since he’s three going on four years old I think, or hope, he can manage this whole process. This project will reenforce how food is grown, patience during the gardening process and then a joys of eating what he grew himself.

If you would like to join us in building a beginners vegetable garden share a picture of your garden to me at nicole@makeandtaste.com. As you can see Leigh, from Virginia and Liz from Chicago are already working on their gardens.

So this is how we started.

First was a trip to our amazing local seed store and we picked the carrots we wanted to grow. (Orange, White and Purple)
Second was the 15-18″ deep container. We are using a deck, so a container was needed, vs a traditional garden setting. Carrots need deep containers to grow, otherwise you will have short carrots.
Third was two bags (1 cubic feet each) of vegetable soil.

Key points.

Temperature. The northeast is still a bit cool and in an ideal world a greenhouse setting would be perfect for carrots. (Soil temps above 45 degrees) But my approach will be to plant the seeds, keep them in the warm sun during the day with a plexiglass cover and move the containers inside once the sun is down.
Planting. You want to create a shallow trench and basically sprinkle soil on top of them loosely. Place the seeds at least 1″ apart. With a toddler, this is tough, but will mean more weeding down once growth starts. There are companies that sell Carrot Seeds in tape form. Yes, tape that you lay out and the seeds are already in place. Here’s a link to one of many options. Carrot Tape
Watering. You want to maintain moist soil, especially in the beginning phase. One the carrots grown 3-4″ high, you don’t need to water as much, but still don’t want the top to layer to crack.