A Forton woman grew a 35cm long carrot after ‘supercharging’ her soil with microbes.
Diana McIntyre, who is Community Composting Coordinator for FoodFutures North Lancashire’s Closing Loops project, said it was only her second year of growing carrots in her garden, but she decided to try different things after only managing to grow one carrot last year.
“The biggest carrot was just over 35cm long and it tasted great, super sweet and not even woody,” she said.
“Some went in a vegetable pie, some to soup and some got roasted with cumin seeds.
“It is only my second year of growing carrots as the veg patch is very heavy clay.
“Lots of homemade compost has been added over the last few years so I gave my dad's surplus carrot seeds a go in 2024.
“I got one carrot so this year I tried again.
“I went from 'I can't grow carrots' to getting a whopper carrot this year.”
Diana sowed the seeds in April, and tried “companion planting” with one row of carrots between two rows of onions to try and avoid carrot fly damage.
She watered them after sowing but said she ignored them after they germinated, only weeding them a couple of times.
To sow the seeds she cut strips of paper towel and marked dots on the distance apart she wanted the seeds to grow.
She made a flour/water glue paste and with a paint brush stuck individual carrot seeds onto the dots, then covered the seed strips with a thin layer of compost and water.
“As well as lots of homemade compost at the end of 2024 I watered the compost bays and the veg patch with a homemade lactobacillus solution (LABS), the same effective microbe involved in fermenting food,” she said.
“I did this to supercharge the compost and inoculate the soil with some really good microbes.”
To find out more about composting visit https://foodfutures.org.uk/composting/.
FoodFutures is North Lancashire’s award winning Sustainable Food Place initiative.
It is made up of representatives from the local farming community, local food businesses, the public sector, Lancaster City Council, NGOs, community food groups and our local academic institutions.
Closing Loops is a collaborative project funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. The project supports community-led action and local initiatives to transform waste into a valuable resource whilst cultivating a circular and regenerative local economy.
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