We Tested Every Carrot Germination Trick (One Blew Us Away)

I've never had good luck with carrots, until last year! My sister who always has great germination with her carrots told me she mixes the seeds with coffee grounds. Her's are used, mine were not. But boy did it work. I did cover them with cardboard for 3 weeks. I had an abundance of carrots! I was beyond happy. So this season I will be doing the same.

I would love for guys to repeat this experiment exactly again in August targeting a fall harvest. See how much different things are in warmer weather.

I’ve been growing carrots this season in tall buckets (6gal). I fill the bucket with my loose soil mix, add my spaced carrot seeds, then top with a layer of moist coco coir, then I put the lid on the bucket and add a touch of water every day until the seeds germinate. I think the combination of coco coir plus a plastic seal above keeps it well moistened for a good germination rate. Just don’t forget to take the lids off once the cotyledons emerge.

Seems like placing them "close to the bin sides" works better than "up the center" also. Might need to rerun that with the rows flipped around.

I’m a chaos carrots kind of person. Grab a hand full of seeds and chuck them- literally throw them at a distance- into your ornamental garden, sometime in winter; and hope for the best. I’ve grown my biggest carrots that way. I never have to thin.

I've done the radish method before, except that I planted the radishes an inch or two to either side of the row of carrots. There is less disturbance to the soil when pulling, and you can let the radishes get a little bigger. Love your trials!!

I left my carrots 🥕 to go to seed about 4 years ago and now I don’t even have to plant them. They’re basically weeds now.

So basically, if you are having trouble growing carrots the regular way, you'll have even more trouble growing them with hacks! 😆 I will say as someone in SoCal the only way I can grow them is with the cardboard method like Jacques.

Another win for the "just throw the seeds in the soil" group.

If you keep seeds from your own carrots, and plant the whole seed pod (instead of removing the tiny seed), I've found they have no trouble holding on to moisture. Almost like nature knew what it was doing.