342 Q&A Grow Carrots in Summer? Weed Cloth - Good or Bad?

Master Gardener Fred Hoffman and his guests answers garden questions from listeners on the Tuesday edition of the Garden Basics podcast. The first question is about weed cloth and its impact on soil improvement and fertilization. Fred and Debbie Flower advise removing the weed cloth and using just mulch instead.
The second question is about planting carrots in California's climate. Fred explains that carrots can be grown year-round in milder coastal climates, but in the Central Valley, they have a hard time germinating and growing in hot temperatures. Master Gardener Gail Pothour also shares tips for planting carrot seeds and suggests using radishes as an indicator for carrot germination.

Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.

Pictured: Garden Carrots

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HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link, good until Oct. 31, 2024)

Top 5 Garden Vegetables, Ep. 263 Garden Basics Podcast
Soil Temperature Conditions for Vegetable Seed Germination (GN 154)
Soil Thermometer
Landscape Fabric - A Cautionary Tale

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Chapters

• 0:24 Q&A Is Weed Cloth Good or Bad?
• 7:34 Q&A Grow Carrots Year Round?
• 16:51 Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter

Transcript

GB 342 TRANSCRIPT Q&A Weed Cloth, Carrots

Farmer Fred  

Welcome back to the Tuesday edition of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. Unlike the Friday edition, we're dedicating the Tuesday podcast to answering your garden questions. Stay tuned to find out how you can get your garden question into the program. So come on, let's do this. 

Q&A WEED CLOTH - GOOD OR BAD?

Farmer Fred

We get a garden question from Kimberly. She's in Roseville, California which is a suburb of Sacramento. It is in Placer County. And for those of you without a map of California open in front of you, Placer County is kind of an odd County. It's a very wide County. It stretches from the middle of the Sacramento Valley, all the way to the Nevada State Line, a very east-west shaped county or west-east shaped County. So it goes from about elevation above sea level of about 50 feet to 8000 feet or so. So you can imagine being a gardener in Placer County. 

Well, in Roseville, which is the lower end of Western Placer County, they used to grow rice there - to give you an idea of where these new homes are going in that Kimberley is part of - so she says, “I love to garden and listen to you and Debbie when I'm out walking my dog, you've come close to answering my question on the podcast, but I need a little more detail. We moved in four years ago to this new development. We have built in a beautiful backyard with a 3500 gallon koi pond and have several raised beds that are for my vegetables. I have 10 fruit trees and quite a few perennial plants in between all the trees and bushes. We put in weed cloth covered with really nice woodchips hoping to improve the really horrible clay soil”. (Remember, this is an area that used to grow rice). She says, “I am now beginning to understand that the weed cloth is actually keeping me from improving the soil. It's breaking down but staying on top of the weed cloth. I am also unsure of how to fertilize my trees and bushes because you can't rake it into the soil at the drip line because the weed cloth gets in the way. Do I remove the weed cloth at this point? Is it pointless to fertilize above the weed cloth? It does make pulling weeds easier. Thanks for your show.” 

Kimberly, you're right about the weed cloth. It's tough to get fertilizer, even liquid fertilizer, through weed cloth to the plant roots. Debbie, do you like weed cloth?

Debbie Flower    

No, I hate weed cloth.

Farmer Fred   

I know. Now, if you've ever lived with weed cloth, you will start swearing at it. 

Debbie Flower   

Yes. And it seems to come to the surface. When you start to rip it out. It just breaks off and then you get shreds of it. And the weeds grow right into it. 

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, exactly. Oh, if weeds germinate in that mulch layer that's on top of the weed cloth, the roots can grow through the openings in that weed cloth and anchor in the soil below. So when you go to pull out that weed, you're pulling up weed cloth with it, and then you decide well, I'll just take out all the exposed parts of weed cloth. And you start ripping and it either rips into shreds or you keep pulling more up out of the ground. Right? And you'll eventually say, “I should have never put that we bought down there to begin with.”

Debbie Flower   

Right. So the answer to our questions are yes and yes.

Farmer Fred   

Do you remove the weed cloth? And is it pointless to fertilize while the weed cloth is there?

Debbie Flower   

 Yes. So yes, remove the weed cloth, which is not going to be a fun job. But do it and you're going to waste money by applying fertilizer over the weed cloth. Maybe a tiny bit will get through, but most of it won't. So it’s better to remove the weed cloth then put the mulch back on top of the soil  and let the mulch break down and be your fertilizer, which was the whole point of the weed cloth.

Farmer Fred    

Just as the name implies, a barrier for weeds.

Debbie Flower   

I think that was the idea. Yes, just like root barriers were supposed to stop tree roots. 

Farmer Fred    

But they thought that because it was a permeable fabric, and thank goodness it wasn't just black plastic, it was a permeable weed cloth that allowed air and water to get through. Well, even that can be temporary because those micropores would plug up.

Debbie Flower   

yes, the fines - meaning the small particles of the mulch that's above it - or whatever else is above it, the tree leaves that have fallen onto it will clog up those pores. However, mulch is a great idea. Mulch is wonderful, yes.

Farmer Fred   

Especially using those chips, shredded tree branches and leaves. I have a load sitting in my driveway right now. 

Debbie Flower

I have one in my yard too.

Farmer Fred

And I love it because it was from a freshly chopped down tree. So there's brown parts and green parts to it.

Debbie Flower    

Yeah, they actually start to compost right there. You can dig into it, and out comes a bunch of steam. 

Farmer Fred    

I stuck my compost thermometer in there just to see how high it would get. And it got up to 110. All right, which is pretty good. Yeah, generally for for a compost pile you want it to be 130 to 140.

Debbie Flower    

Right. But that will break down weed seeds and things like that. 

Farmer Fred   

110 degrees  isn’t  a bad start. Oh, so there's that. So add a few inches of mulch as long as it's not touching the trunks of the plants. So you're doing fine. And what's nice too, is mulch can also keep those weed seeds from sprouting, or at least make them easier to pull out. Yes, soil is still moist. 

Debbie Flower   

Yes, moist soil that's another benefit and over time the soil will become more friable meaning more open and it  will have greater tilth. That's another word that means it's open and easy to turn. And so the weeds will be easier even over time to pull out.

Farmer Fred  

Whenever I think of the word tilth, I always think of the word pornography and the Supreme Court. I forget which Supreme Court Justice it was who said, “I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it”. Tilth is the same way. I can't really define it, but I'll know it when I see it, because it's just this fine, black, beautiful soil. And there's earthworms there. And it's like you're holding life in your hand.

Debbie Flower   

And it's easy to work. It doesn't take a pickaxe and, and watering to get the soil to be able to dig into the soil. 

Farmer Fred  

And now I have to look up and see which Supreme Court Justice that was who said that. otherwise I will get complaints. So according to the Wall Street Journal, the Supreme Court Justice who made that phrase, “I know it when I see it”  as far as in reference to pornography, was Justice Potter Stewart, in a case back in 1964.

Debbie Flower  

Long time ago. 

Farmer Fred

The Johnson years. 

Debbie Flower

Hmm.

Farmer Fred  

And we mentioned too, and we mentioned this a lot. I will keep mentioning it because we both love mulch and it will moderate soil temperatures that allows moisture to better penetrate the soil. And as you like to say to Debbie, it breaks up that falling rain.

Debbie Flower  

Yes to prevent soil compaction. 

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, to do that, it improves the texture of your clay soil as it breaks down. It increases the bio activity in the soil below increasing the amount of the good, the good soil critters, the bacteria, fungi that are good guys.

Debbie Flower 

And there's a lot more of the good guys out there than the bad guys in terms of soil biology.

Farmer Fred  

You just got to give them a chance. 

Debbie Flower   

Yes, you got to let them live.

Farmer Fred    

You don't do it with plastic. You do it with the creations of God, trees and shrubs.  There you go. Kimberly, thanks for writing in.

===========================

Q&A CAN YOU GROW CARROTS IN THE SUMMER?

Speakpipe Caller 7:43  

So I just planted some carrots and realized that I usually succession plant carrots. However it's you know, heating up. I know it's not time any there's no, it just seems like there's no time now to plant any more carrots. Do you just stop until fall again? Or is our weather in California, just something we can plant? In all the time? I know there's schedules of plants to when to plant and all that. I guess my question is like, can I just plant some more now? Or should I wait?

Farmer Fred  8:16  

Well, thank you for using SpeakPipe. First of all to get your message into us, speakpipe is available to anybody who wants to leave a garden question for us. And you don't need to use your phone, go to your computer, go to speakpipe.com/gardenbasics. And you can just talk right into your laptop or if you have a microphone and have that and leave us the question. So thank you for doing that, whoever you are, wherever you live. 

As always, please tell us where you're gardening. Just a general location. I don't need your street address. You can use whatever name you want. If you want to call yourself Taylor Swift, that’s fine by me, but at least be accurate as far as where you're gardening. Thank you so much.

 If you are in California, California has a wide variety of climates in which to garden and you can grow carrots year round, if you live in a milder coastal climate where the daytime high temperatures do not exceed very often 90 degrees, nor in the wintertime doesn't get much colder than 35 or 40 degrees. In that case, the soil temperature is much more moderate. And yes, you could grow carrots year round in that area. However, in the Central Valley of California, where the summers do get over 100 degrees, ccarrots would have a hard time germinating in those sort of temperatures. And if they did germinate and it got hot, chances are what would grow would be rather woody. Carrots do have a wide germination rate as far as temperatures go. 

Our friend Master Gardener Gail Pothour put together a really nice garden note for the Sacramento County Master Gardeners called “Soil Temperature Conditions for Vegetable Seed Germination”. The  chart lists the optimum soil temperatures at which various crops do best as well as the minimum and the maximum. Many garden crops are listed on this, including carrots, and it points out that the minimum soil temperature for carrots to germinate is 40 degrees, the optimum range is 65 to 85 degrees, and the maximum temperature is 95 degrees. Greater than that, the seeds probably won't germinate. Also in that same Garden Note, which is Garden Note number 154. Once again entitled “soil temperature conditions for vegetable seed germination”, Gail quotes a source from University of California Davis, JF Harrington, who wrote some excellent information way back when, in 1954. And this gentleman put together a chart that shows the number of days it takes for seeds to germinate at various temperatures ranging from 32 degrees on up to 104 degrees. Carrots are on the list. If the ground temperature is 32 degrees, guess what? Carrots won't germinate. At 41 degrees, it takes a carrot seed 50 days to germinate. And that number of days drops precipitously as the days get warmer. If that soil temperature is 50 degrees, which is what it usually is here in  April, it takes 17 days for carrot seeds to germinate. 10 days at 59 degrees. 

Ideally, as we pointed out before, about the ideal temperature range for carrots to germinate is 65 to 85 degrees. And sure enough in that range at 68 degrees, carrots take less than a week to germinate. 6.9 days. At 77 degrees, carrots takes 6.2 days to germinate. 86 degrees it’s 6.0. But as the temperature goes up, the longer it takes. At 95 degrees, it takes 8.6 days for carrots to germinate. If the soil temperature is over 104 degrees, zero days. We talked with Master Gardener Gail Pothour back in episode 263. We were discussing the top five homegrown garden vegetables in which carrots came in at number five. And Gail explained to us the role temperature plays in the progress of a carrot seed and a carrot plant.

(Carrot Interview Originally aired in Ep. 263)

Farmer Fred   

Number five. Oh boy, here we go. It's a crop that, I think because it is a root crop, you can grow it just about year round, but it depends on your climate, and that’s carrots.

Gail Pothour  

I have actually never tried growing them in the summer here because I think we're too hot. I think the roots will be too woody. It is generally a fall through spring crop in our area, but yeah, carrots can be easy to grow. It depends on your soil, they do like to have the loose soil, no stones or clods in them. If you have real heavy soil, there are varieties that are shorter and maybe a little sturdier and can tunnel right through that clay. But they typically like to have a real loose soil. And you can get that if you have a raised bed. We have clay here, I couldn't grow carrots in my ground, I can do it in a raised bed or a large container.

Farmer Fred    

And you're absolutely right. If you have rocky soil and you want to grow carrots, it might be a good idea to grow the shorter varieties like Danvers Half Long.

Gail Pothour  

Danvers, and there's a type that's called Chantenay. And they're real blunt and sturdier. They're, they're thicker at the top. And they can just power their way through heavy soils easier than the ones you find at the grocery store, which typically are the Imperator types. They're long and slender. And you really need to have good loose, deep soil to grow those varieties.

Farmer Fred  

Yep, raised bed is the perfect solution for growing carrots. And here in USDA zone nine in California, you can plant carrots from seed, which  I don't even know if you can grow from transplants. Have you ever seen carrots at a nursery as a transplant?

Gail Pothour   

I have actually, I have recently, and I was astonished. Because I don't know how you would transplant a carrot without getting that root to be disturbed. I mean, it could twist or it could bend and that's what you're harvesting. And so you want good straight roots. So I don't know how you would do that.

Farmer Fred  

Were they in just normal size containers? Or were they in like nine inch tall tree pots?

Gail Pothour  

No, in a six pack. 

Farmer Fred  

My. Well, you can plant carrots from seed. That's a lot safer. And here in Zone nine, you can plant them in March, April, May. And like you mentioned, the fall through winter planting season of August through December of planting carrots from seed. Debbie Flower once gave us a very good tip for planting carrot seeds because they're so small, they're very difficult to put them in place one inch apart. Because they're so small,  there's usually a clump of them. And you need to get that thinned out so that they stand,  two or three inches apart ideally. And one of her students came up with a plan. They used moist chopsticks. They dipped the chopstick in water and then dipped it in a bowl of carrot seeds. And then very carefully shove the carrot seeds off the chopstick into place in the garden, a couple of inches apart. That's sounds easy.

Gail Pothour   

I haven't heard of that. I'll have to give that a try. Because yeah, carrot seeds are so tiny that it's  almost impossible to spread them out to their ultimate thinned destination. But wow, okay off to try that. They do take a long time to germinate. I have found it could take several weeks, even three or four weeks. So you got to keep them pretty moist. At the FAIR Oaks Horticulture Center, what we typically do is put a piece of Agribon row cover over it. You could use burlap or whatever and then soak that and that would keep the soil moist until they start to come up, but they have a long germination period.

Farmer Fred   

Another tip to help thwart that waiting period or at least let you know that you’ve planted carrots there and you better not disturb that soil: Debbie Flower gave us this tip. Plant radishes nearby the carrot seeds because radishes germinate so quickly it will let you know that there are carrots also waiting to come up in that spot. So you won’t go digging around there.

Gail Pothour   

That's right. Yeah, that's a good tip to do. And radishes germinate so quickly, and  you'll have them harvested before the carrots are  even ready to thin much. So yeah, that's a good tip.

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BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred  

What’s a podcast garden tour without pictures? In two recent episodes of the Garden Basics podcast, Debbie Flower and myself took a stroll through a couple of gardens: my backyard garden, which was in Episode 341, which came out on Friday, June 7. And Debbie’s fabulous garden which you can hear about on the Friday, June 14 edition of the podcast. But again, what’s a garden tour without pictures?

You can get a look at the plants we’re talking about, as well, in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, in both the June 7 and June 14 editions. So, via the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, you can listen to what we had to say as well as scroll down to see the plants and the gardening techniques that we were talking about.  Find a link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter in today’s show notes, or go to substack.com/gardenbasics and sign up for free. 

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and it's brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics. It's available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, gardenbasics.net . And that's where you can find out about the free Garden Basics newsletter, “Beyond the Garden Basics”. And thank you so much for listening.