Early Nantes Carrots 12 weeks in and first harvest

It's been 3 months already, and the carrots are showing nice broad shoulders above the soil, so I've been wondering whether to harvest or not.

12 week old early nantes carrots

 Impatience got the better of me and I decided to uproot two carrots to see how they are doing, and they would be able to be added to a salad that evening.  The carrots I picked were the same two shown in the photo above.  There seemed to be quite a lot of carrot there, but I had been stung by the lack of depth of the beetroot, so still was not expecting a decent sized carrot.  Below is the result.

Early nantes carrots just after harvest.

So weirdly, one is short and fat, the other longer, but thinner.  Neither were as big as I was hoping, but they were very nice.

I've left the others in the ground to get a bit bigger.  I'm coming to the conclusion that normal carrots are a bit of a waste in a small vegetable garden as they take a long time, take up a lot of space and are so cheap to buy in the supermarkets that the garden crop is very expensive by comparison.

I'm still holding out more hope for the purple carrots though.

11 weeks in - Early Nantes Carrots

Here's how the carrots are looking after 11 weeks.

11 Week old Early Nantes Carrots

As can be seen, they are still growing nicely, and I can only hope that the carrot is buried deep into the soil.

The second crop, now at 7 weeks old is shown below.

7 Week old carrot seedlings

No sign of carrot tops poking through yet, but healthy seedlings nonetheless.

Early Nantes 2 carrots at 10 weeks

10 weeks in, and I couldn't resist scraping away a little soil to check if the carrots are growing or not.  It's quite frustrating just seeing the green leaves and hoping something is going on under the ground.  Anyway, I was happy to see that there is something definitely carrot like there.

Early Nantes 2 carrots at 10 weeks

As you can see, it is not much, but still encouraging to see something there!  I've added a second photo showing how the carrot seedlings look without the top bit of soil being scraped away.

The second crop, which is a month behind, so now 6 weeks old is also growing well.

6 week old carrot seedlings

Remember to click on the "Early Nantes 2 Carrots" link on the top right of this page or directly below here to see week by week how the carrots have grown from seed to the date of harvest.  

First pathetic crop!

During the week I was reading about thinning carrots, so looking at my first crop of Early Nantes 2 carrots I decided some of them needed some extra space.  I uprooted about 5 seedlings, giving the rest about two inches between each plant. While the small seedlings definitely looked like carrots, they were very very small, about the size of a matchstick each.  We dropped them into a salad, but they pretty much got lost in there!

Here are the first crop, now at 9 weeks old.

The second crop which was sown a month after the first lot, and is shown below.  These are still too close together, so I'll need to think these out in the next week or two I think, but I can't imagine I'll even get the smallest of carrots to eat from these when thinned.

Slow going

All seems well with the carrots, they all look healthy, and are growing nicely.

At some point soon I'll need to thin them out so they all have room to grow, but for now, they are about an inch apart which seems about right.

The first batch are now 8 weeks old and as can be seen below, still look healthy.

8 week old Early Nantes 2 Carrot seedlings

The second batch of seedlings are now 4 weeks old, and are shown below, overlapping a little bit with a few stray spring onion seeds.

Early Nantes 2 Carrots

I opted for Early Nantes 2 carrots as they could be planted reasonably early in the year, and looked to be able to grow to a decent size.

These were first planted on 12th March.  They seemed to take ages to germinate, but I spotted some small seedlings on 31st March.

So, now, on 2nd May, this is how the seven week old Early Nantes 2 carrot seedlings look.

7 week old Early Nantes 2 carrot seedlings

I think they are a long way from being able to eat just yet, but do look like they are growing healthily.

I've subsequently planted a second row of these on 3rd April.  These are now 4 weeks old and seemingly growing ok.

4 week old Early Nantes 2 Seedlings