Carrots

Carrots: According to the Moon Planting Chart, yesterday and today are opportune to plant root vegetables; the moon is in its waning gibbous phase following the full moon on April 15th. An old Italian gardener first told me about moon planting. His wisdom was passed on from generation to generation to generation but I couldn't hold it all in my head so my thoughtful daughter gave me a moon planting chart.
I was also keen to try a practical idea I have read about for evenly spacing carrot seeds.I have been waiting to find the perfect seed dispenser and I must admit I bought "Clive of India" curry powder in a simple cardboard cylinder with a dispensing hole in the plastic lid, with carrot planting in mind. It's easy to remove the lid and drop in a mix of carrot seeds, sand and radish seeds then evenly pour it into shallow prepared drills and fill in with 6mm of sieved soil or compost. The next step is to gently water (use a watering can with the rose attached) and to place a thin piece of wood over the seeded area so the germinating seeds don't dry out. Carrot seeds take 10-21 days to germinate. Planting with radishes has the advantage of clearly marking the row of germinating carrots that can look so like tiny grass weeds. The nifty thing about radish plants is that they are ready to harvest long before the carrots, leaving, hopefully, the correct spacings between the carrot plants.