carrots in egg cartons

[JRinPA]

This one really impressed me...starts seeds on heat and wet paper towels until they sprout. Then take egg carton, poke a hole through the bottom, fill with 1/2 potting soil and 1/2 sand or coir, lay a sprouted seed in each and lightly cover. Grow these out a bit and then just lay them at grade on a worked row and back fill a bit.

Boy oh boy I bet that works and I have thrown away so many paperboard egg cartons in the last 6 months.

[pondgardener]

@JRinPA Interesting! Thanks for sharing...

[eyegrotom]

I watched that video a couple of days ago. I just might give it a try.

[AKgardener]

Saw it on you tube as well was thinking about trying it

[JRinPA]

Personally I have a lot of trouble with outdoor germination so I was considering micro soil blocks this year. This just seems much better with the built weed suppression as well, and I love the spacing compared to rows with 6-8" between for room to hoe. The hardest part with this would manipulating wet carrot seeds that just sprouted.

I guess a craigslist egg carton want ad is the next step. I composted so many of these over the last year, that is somewhat annoying. And the cheapest eggs now are Brown eggs coming in plastic trays.

I think youtube might be getting more useful I also found some reasonable cardboard box potato beds videos. Probably keep voles out of them fairly easily too, with just a flat sheet of 1/2" hw cloth underneath, and no need to dig at all.

[JRinPA]

So I've gathered some paperboard egg cartons and sprouted some carrot seed. I will say that a germination chamber from a Plastic Egg Carton really works well. Two layers of paper towel, then layer of cotton t shirt material on top. Holes punched with the tears up so water can escape a bit. On 77F heat mat. My seed is a couple years old and there is very close to 100% germination that I would never approach in the ground. That is a new trick for me, using cotton rag on top.

Transferring those sprouts to paper egg cartons, now that is a lot of work. I guess I did 6 dozen, just a single in each. We shall see. Worrying about the direction of the root at that stage? Is that an actual concern?

I have 10x that many sprouts left over. The old bag was an ounce, so I started plenty. Not sure how I want to use them. Ideally I'd like to grow carrots in pots, since I don't have deep sandy beds that are rock free. So I may go by another video, Home Grown Veg, and use some of those sprouts that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2fdxPmks0

[rossomendblot]

Worrying about the direction of the root at that stage? Is that an actual concern?

I don't think so. When I grow parsnips I 'chit' them on wet paper towel, then use tweezers to place them in the soil. It doesn't seem to matter which way the root is pointing, it will just follow gravity. Not sure I'd have the patience to do the same with carrots.

[JRinPA]

First ones are in next to some overwintered spinach. I picked up about 14 or so 30 pack boxes this weekend. I started ten of those today with sprouted seed from...Friday night I started it, I believe. They are the ones to use. Very easy to stack four of them deep and pierce all four with the rounded butt of a tweezers. I just wondering now where the tweezers got to, hope I didn't lose it.

I figured I'd start them like this and see who wants to try some at the comm garden.

14.JPG

18.JPG

17.JPG

[eyegrotom]

Please keep us updated on the progress of Carrot grow out

[JRinPA]

I'm probably much better off putting 3-4 dry seed in each and wetting them down well in a greenhouse...tweezering sprouts was not terrible, but, in the first 6-1/2 dozen (got planted today) I probably 2 dozen blank cells that I put more sprouted seed in before setting out today. So not great success rate, 60-70 percent. But getting the big cartons, just to poke a hole, fill with compost, and sprinkle dry seed - I think I could hack thinning them with scissors after a few weeks, better than trying to manipulate a single wet, sprouted seed.

And I see today I did not poke a 1 cm deep finger hole, I just put nosed the tweezer about 1 cm deep and opened it while twisting and extracting. Most of the time the seed released, on the second tweezer at least. The first tweezer would not let them go! The roots kept sticking to the tweezer jaws, it was bizarre.

[MrBig46]

Despite the problems with sowing the germinated seed, I'll give it a try with the egg salaries this year. I won't be rooting for carrots like this, but root parsley, which sprouts really poorly in the flower bed. The lines then look like notes on a drum. The SEMO company even offers pre-germinated seeds of this parsley, which, however, last only two months and are hideously expensive. I tried it once, it really germinated, but I had to tear it, which I really don't like. As I observe, almost no one grows this parsley in the garden anymore and prefers to buy it in the store, but for a lot of money.
Vladimír

[JRinPA]

I think I grew root parsley one year...Hamburg, I think it was called. There is a Hamburg in PA, about an hour drive or less, and I thought Hamburg Rooted Parsley was a PA Dutch parsley. It didn't seem much different than parsnips, after it was up. The seed is different though. I grew it in the backyard raised bed, I can picture it next to eggplant that year.

Parsnips are hard to germinate as well. I think I will use some of these egg cartons for parsnips, yet. I haven't like eating the parsnips much the last few years...maybe I should go to back to the rooted parsley...

[MrBig46]

Czech and probably no other Central European cuisine is complete without root vegetables (carrots, tuberous celery and root parsley). In a certain ratio, they are added to all soups (meat broths, fish soups and all vegetable soups). These three root vegetables are also often the basis of various sauces. How important this vegetable is is shown by the fact that there are more than ten different varieties of root parsley in the assortment of Czech companies. At one time, parsnips were offered in stores as a substitute, but it didn't take off very well. For my experiment, I chose the varieties Alba and Efez. So far, the first attempts are only about thirty percent successful. The germinated seeds on two plates dried up, I sprinkle the third plate at least three times a day, which had a positive effect, most of the plants are already climbing out of the ground. For the fourth plateau, I will try to put four seeds in each well (pre-soaked for about 40 hours) and cover the entire plateau with a non-woven fabric to limit water evaporation.
Vladimir
PS.:If you're interested, it's no problem for me to send you parsley root seeds. I just need to know your mailing address.

[JRinPA]

Glad to hear you are having some success with the egg cartons. Mine were very spotty with carrots on the large scale second attempt. Transplanting sprouted seeds is not for me. I put them right into a greenhouse and I believe it was just too hot for them to not dry out.

I like the idea and I think it would work better if I tried again. The 100% compost I used just isn't ideal with the heat cycle of a plastic greenhouse.

I tried to find some Root Parsley around here, but no luck so far. Thanks for the offer. I'll send you a PM.

[MrBig46]

It wasn't until the fourth attempt that I managed to grow some root parsley plants in the egg tray. I had to mix the water holding substrate - peat and compost 1:1. I kept the surface moist and kept the egg tray moist by pouring water into the saucer. I put two germinated seeds in one well. In about a week I will limit them, there will be only one plant in each cell. Then I have to transport everything by city transport (tram + trolleybus) to the garden and place the entire plateau on the flowerbed. I hope something comes of it.
Vladimír
online image hosting

[JRinPA]

I am about to start mine, need to start parsley in addition to lettuce, basil...seems like more stuff I can't think of. I will use micro soil blocks and then transplant to the egg cartons, maybe.

The early carrots in egg cartons are looking okay.

[worth1]

Unless I buy the super duper extra expensive with no benefits to me eggs they don't come in paper cartons.

[JRinPA]

I keep forgetting to take pictures. I have thinned some weeds but it is looking pretty good for spacing on the first batch. The second batch, lot of wasted work I think, they did not do well planting germinated seed into the tray and then sitting that in the plastic greenhouse. HOT COLD DRY then SOAKED every couple days.

I'm thinking the way to go for me for carrots would be to poke the hole, fill with soil and 1 2 or 3 seeds, put in place on row and water them there. Get the benefit of spacing and weed suppression for the cost of a maybe little thinning per cell and but saving all the germination/transplant into cell hoopla.

The 30 pack bulk trays are thinner than the normal 12 or 18 pack paperboard trays. Ask at a diner maybe, I got mine after a church breakfast. They cover more space and will break down faster. Also easier to punch the holes. BUT after wetting for a few weeks trying to start the onion seed, they really wanted to come apart when moved.

We usually have paper egg cartons around here on cheapest eggs except in Spring, when they are foam. Not sure the reason for that. For the actual insulation value?

But now I am seeing actual plastic egg cartons, I used for germination trays. Mostly on the brown eggs maybe? I don't look that closely, usually.

[JRinPA]

June 12 pics. I only weeded that one time and those weeds were in the compost I use, not grown up through from the dirt. It has been dry, there is drip tape the last week but not sure how much they get, with their layout. I did sprinkling can them a few times this spring.

30.JPG

43.JPG

44.JPG

45.JPG

[JRinPA]

I have pulled a few carrots at a time, three times now. Most of the carrots are forked. They are spaced very nicely indeed, one carrot top per cell. So I can't really see down in there in the evening when I pull them, but I can easily follow one set of leaves down and find a nice top, they are all solo due to cells. Push down and pull up and they come out looking like this:
one on left broke even though I pushed/pulled. And I couldn't extract the rest with just fingers. Red beets don't have these forking problems , but my carrots always seem to. .

03.JPG

They didn't get watered very evenly, and the soil is still the soil. But they are good spacing and not many weeds. I was hoping for nice single body carrots for once. Well, good enough for shredding I guess, they are needed in coleslaw STAT!