How I Grew Carrots in a Bucket and You Can Too!

Growing Carrots in Pots Could Actually Be More beneficial To Growing In the Ground...

Bold statement, so hear me out.

When I first started growing food, I was not working with some dreamy productive veg patch, all I had a tiny shaded coastal yard and a collection of pots.

So for me, growing in containers wasn’t a trendy design choice or an exciting experiment; It was that or nothing.

These days I grow on an allotment instead, which is a lot more forgiving than trying to raise vegetables in what was essentially a windy little concrete corridor by the sea, but I still think carrots in pots are one of the best beginner-friendly things you can grow.

Mainly because carrots are one of those crops that sound straightforward until you actually try to grow them.

Theres plenty that can go wrong: 

Too many stones? They fork.
Too much fresh manure? They fork.
Heavy soil? They come out looking like something you should probably see the GP about.
And they are very susceptible to 'carrot root fly' which is a common pest that can decimate your carroty dreams if you're not careful. 

But this is where pots come into play. 

First of all, you get full control over the compost. You can give carrots a nice deep, stone-free (and loose) home instead of asking them to push their way through claggy ground.

But the other big perk is carrot root fly.

Carrot root fly can bury into the carrots themselves laying eggs, hatching larvae and just causing general havoc. 

However, something interesting about these little critters is that they tend to fly low to the ground, which is how we as gardeners can outsmart them, by capitalising on growing carrots higher than ground level, in pots. 

They're said to fly about 60cm from the ground, however even if you don't have pots that deep, they can be elevated, propped up on other articles to reach this height and place them out of the sticky reach of the flies. RHS trials looked at carrot fly barriers, and both RHS and Gardeners’ World recommend roughly that sort of height as a useful line of defence (better check with the big boys too, eh?).

That’s one of the reasons carrots in pots can work so well. If the container is already raised off the ground, whether that’s on a bench, wall, step or table, you’re making it a bit harder for the flies to find them in the first place. Not impossible, because gardening would never allow us to have things too easy, but definitely harder. 

If I’ve got room in the pot, I also like to tuck a few spring onions in there too. The logic is that the oniony smell helps muddle things up and mask the scent of the carrots a bit, making it even harder for the flies to track you down (gosh they won't stand a chance will they?). 

Onions and carrots are one of the classic companion planting pairings for exactly that reason, although I’d still file it under “helpful tactic” rather than “guaranteed wizardry”. 

Another thing I do is sow them fairly densely.

Not to the point of total chaos, but definitely more generously than the packet probably had in mind.

Then I thin them out once they hit that lovely small carrot stage, which means you get a first harvest of sweet baby carrots, and then the ones left behind can carry on bulking up into proper chunky ones later.

Two harvests from one pot. Lovely Jubbley.

So to recap, pots means:

Less weeding.
Less bending.
Less losing a row of seedlings under a jungle of something else.
Less root fly risk.
Less chance of digging them up and finding a horror show.

Just a pot, some compost, a packet of seeds, and a fairly decent chance of success.

So if you’re growing in a small space, if your soil is rubbish, or if you simply cannot be bothered with one more pest-related betrayal, carrots in pots are well worth a go.

Choose a nice deep container, use soft fluffy compost, keep them watered, chuck in some spring onions if there’s room, and sow enough that you can thin for a cheeky baby carrot harvest before the main event.

It’s simple, productive, and a very good way to feel like you’ve got your life together, even if the rest of the garden is absolute carnage!