Endless Rain and Carrots in Raised Beds

Growing in the Endless Rain

I’ve had a number of emails from growers concerned about the amount of rain we’ve been having and its effect on their plants. One lady had her sprouts and kale standing in pools of water, and wondered if she should just pull the plants. Another was concerned everything would rot away.

There’s nothing we can do about the rain, but we can mitigate its effects.

Reducing the Rain Problem

First of all, the soil. Traditional double digging breaks up the soil and distributes organic matter throughout the topsoil. This acts as a sponge and absorbs water, holding it to be available when the rain stops and it’s needed.

The organic matter also helps our friends, the worms, who will create tunnels in the soil helping the water percolate down in wet weather and up in dry.

When the water table regularly creeps up to the surface level of the soil and threatens to drown everything, consider growing in raised beds. Even 15cm (6 ins.) high beds will help. Be aware you might need to do more watering in dry spells, though.

With heavy clay soils, liming every three years or as necessary will cause the small particles in clay soils to flocculate (clump together) which will really help drainage. Consider adding grit or sand to clay to help drainage, although with liming and organic matter, I’ve never found it necessary.

With light, sandy soils, adding organic matter won’t help drainage but it will help the soil absorb and retain moisture for the following dry spell.

Also consider adding drainage. It’s a fair bit of work, but not too hard with the modern perforated pipes. Lead the pipes to a deep soak away or best of all a ditch that can drain off the plot altogether.

All those preventative measures will help cope with persistent rain.

Pooling water

Right now, the only thing I can suggest to help with water pooling around plants is to insert a fork into the ground as deeply as possible. Then gently rock the fork a little and withdraw. This should help the water drain down and allow air to the plant roots.

Plants don’t need much air available to their roots, but they can drown if there is none.

Flooding, where rivers burst their banks or the main drains back up is a different matter and sadly much harder to deal with. I’ve written about coping with floods in the past.

Raised Beds for Carrots and Turnips

Newsletter Subscriber Bryan asks:

I am thinking of making a raised growing bed for carrots and turnips. However, I am not sure what would be a suitable height.

Could you help please?

Well, to take the easy one first, turnips don’t need much depth of soil. 15cm or 6 ins. Is sufficient. That just leaves the carrots.

Show growers, looking to produce those super long carrots and parsnips, as tall as a man, will use full barrels filled with sand and compost cores within the sand for the actual root. There’s an article on growing long carrots for show here and long parsnips here.

For us mortals, growing carrots for the table, life is a little easier. The thing is to have a friable, preferably stone-free, growing medium that is longer than the required root. I’ve grown carrots very successfully in 45cm, 18 ins. deep cylinders cut from a plastic barrel. I go into more depth here: Growing Carrots in Barrels

I’d say that a raised bed on top of good quality, friable dug soil being 30cm 12 ins. high would be sufficient.