Succession sowing carrots: a UK summer calendar

You sowed a thick carrot drill in April, the row came ready together, and by late summer the bed is empty or woody. Succession sowing carrots is the ordinary fix: a short row every three to four weeks, from April to early July, so the harvest moves with the calendar. The Royal Horticultural Society treats carrots as a little-and-often crop inside that window. One April sowing can still be the right start. It is a weak plan if you wanted roots from June through to November.

In short

Sow a short row of an early carrot every three to four weeks from April until early July, and use fleece only if you start an early variety in February or March. Repeat that early type for the short rows, and keep one later sowing if you want roots to store. A packet can cover several short rows when the seed count is real, and one April drill still leaves a gap later in the year.

A short row every three to four weeks

The working interval comes from the RHS grow guide: small batches, every three to four weeks, between April and early July. A short row is a deliberate small sowing, long enough for a few meals and short enough that you still have seed and bed for the next date. You thin it, you pull it as the roots size, and you sow the next strip while the first is still in the ground.

Sow the first short row in early April, the next in early May, another in late May or early June, and a last one in late June or the first days of July. Four sowings, three to four weeks apart, is one way to use the published window. Shift the dates if your soil is still cold in April, and stop when you reach early July. The sketch is a calendar, not a yield.

The single thick sowing is the gap this interval is there to close. Seed, water and weeding all land on one drill, the roots size together, and the bed is then finished for the year. Sowing that drill more thickly crowds the seedlings. Spend the packet as several thin sowings. A very small bed may hold only two short rows at once. Reuse a strip only after you have pulled the oldest row.

The UK window, including fleece for earlies

For open ground, take April to early July as the season. That is the RHS window for the main run of sowings. When to sow carrots in the UK, inside that window, is then a question of your soil and of how many short rows you still have room for. A late spring in the north, or a bed that stays wet, is a reason to start at the April end of the window rather than forcing a February date.

February and March are a separate case. The RHS allows them for early varieties under protection, usually fleece over a prepared drill. That cover brings one small early row forward. It does not open the whole succession in midwinter. With no cover and no sheltered spot, wait for April.

The last useful sowing is early July. Kings Seeds gives April to July for Early Nantes 2, close enough to plan by. After early July a new drill has a shorter run of growing weather, so use the last sowing inside the window for a row you intend to keep. A mid-August drill is a hope, not another turn of the published season.

Some Nantes packets carry a harvest line from June to November. Read that as a seller's picture of the variety across several sowings. On the Meldon listing, about 65–75 days from an April sowing points at June or July, and a June sowing points later in the summer. We did not grow a trial row, and the seller's harvest line is not a weighed crop from the April drill.

Early varieties versus a storage sowing

You do not need a new variety every three weeks. Kings Seeds calls Early Nantes 2 its favourite for successional sowing, from April to July, and it mentions troughs as well as the open garden. Repeating one early, blunt type is the simple version of the method. Our carrot seed comparison leads with Meldon Early Nantes, ASIN B09X4S1W15, at about £3.10 with 4.3 from 267 reviews on amazon.co.uk. The seller describes a blunt root with a small core and a maturity of about 65–75 days. That is a listing, not a taste test. A qualifying purchase through our links can earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.

Pull those early rows as they reach a size you want to eat. The seller's 65–75 days is a planning figure from the listing, and a dry spell, a late start or a cool June will move it. Reviewers often mention a lot of seed, sprouting, and a crop they liked. Others report no germination, a damp packet, or roots that stayed small. Keep seed back for the next date. The reviews describe this listing. They do not promise that every packet will match the cheerful ones.

A storage sowing is one row of a maincrop you mean to leave, or to lift, for winter. It is a different job from another early row three weeks later. Early and maincrop carrots can share a bed as neighbours if the storage strip is one you will not need again in three weeks, because that crop occupies the ground for much longer. Fill the bed with a storage type in April and the summer rows have nowhere to go. Root shape is a separate choice from the calendar, and the Nantes and Chantenay page is where to compare type once you know which sowing is the early and which is the keeper.

Kings also mentions troughs for the successional early. A trough or a deep pot can take a short row when the depth suits the root, and it does not change the interval or the April to early July window. Depth for pots is on the carrot container page. A shallow trough that suits a stump or baby root will stall a long storage type, however tidy the sowing dates look.

One packet can cover several rows if the count is real

The content gap on most sowing calendars is the packet in your hand. A title that says about 1,000 seeds is enough, in principle, for several short rows across four sowings, because each sowing is a thin drill rather than a whole bed sown thickly. You still thin. You still lose some seed to a dry spell or to a drill that never comes up. What you must not do is convert 1,000 seeds into a kilogram of roots. This article has no yield figure, and it will not invent one.

On the Meldon Early Nantes listing the count is not stable. The title says 1,000 seeds. The pieces line says 2,000. Plan the season from 1,000, the lower figure, and treat 2,000 as a claim you have not verified by counting. If the packet really holds the higher number, you have spare seed. If it holds the lower number, a plan built on 2,000 runs out before early July. How titles, bullets and reviews fall out of step is the subject of the seed-count article. For this calendar, the cautious number is the one that still leaves you a last short row.

Four short rows between April and early July is a fair picture of one packet. Mark the date you opened it, sow thinly, and stop when the drill is the length you meant. The next date takes another short drill from what remains. If the first sowing used half the packet, the later dates are already short of seed, whatever the title promised. This is a way of sharing the packet. It is not a grams-per-metre formula, and it is not a yield.

Depth is the other place a packet can mislead you, and this article will not re-teach the whole drill. Public UK guides used for the how-to put carrot seed at about 1 cm. The Meldon seller says to cover with about 3 cm. Those two instructions cannot both be your default. Follow the steps on the how to sow carrots page, then come back here for the dates. Getting the depth wrong on every succession simply repeats the same failure four times.

What to do when a row misses

A missed row is part of the method, not a reason to abandon the calendar. If the April drill is empty after a fair wait, sow the May row on its date. Use fresh ground or a fresh strip in the same bed. Leave the rest of the packet for the sowings you have not made yet. Pouring the remainder into the failed drill spends the season on one attempt, which is the thick-sowing problem again.

Check one thing before you copy the first drill exactly. Depth is the conflict already noted: about 1 cm in the public guides, about 3 cm on this seller's listing. A reviewer on the Early Nantes listing blamed depth when the crop disappointed. That single comment does not prove a cause, and it does sit next to a real disagreement between the listing and the guides. The how-to page is the place to settle it. Also look at the seed itself. Damp seed in a soft packet is a reason to doubt the next sowing from that packet, and several reviews on this listing mention a damp packet or no germination at all.

Fleece, a dry spell, and a waterlogged drill each have their own limit. Fleece is for the February and March early, and for a cold snap over a young April row. It does not turn a July sowing into an April one. Water the drill if the surface dries before the seedlings show. Stop if the bed is already wet enough to rot the seed. A failed row in a hollow that sits in water will fail again if you resow in the same hollow. Move the next short row a little higher in the bed.

Keep the storage decision separate from the rescue. If you have lost the April early, your next short row is still an early. The storage sowing stays the one later row you mean to keep, inside the same April to early July window. Replacing a lost early with a whole-bed sowing of a storage type in May fills the ground and ends the succession. You can still eat carrots. You have given up the staggered harvest this calendar is for.