Clay soil

I'm on clay soil here and have been gradually breaking it down and adding compost/manure/grit over the last couple of years. Will the grit make carrots/parsnips fork at the root..or will the root just bypass the tiny pieces of stone and not deform?

Steve...

 

I am a bit of a newbie on the growing of edibles, but I am reliably informed that they have problems with lumps of tightly compacted soil even, so I would say yes they will deform if they hit a small stone.

I know some people go to the lengths of using only sieved compost to grow carrots in and being a newb I did this last year to be on the safe side, it worked a treat so I will be using the same technique again.

I just sowed the carrots in a container of sieved compost-paris market so they are short stubby ones anyway, and for the parsnips I used a technique that Daitheplant told me about-driving a stake into the soil, filling that up with sieved stuff and sowed one seed on the top of each hole.

It might be perectly ok to sow in gritty soil, as I say I am new at edible gardening.

 

yeah agree with above, for straight long carrots you sieved or very sandy soil, you could try a short blunt nosed variety like chantaray (sp?). I was lucky to have access to some free sand so I made a raised bed, I dug the surface VERY well amd filled with a mix of sieved topsoil sieved homemade compost and sand (at about equal measures I think just mixed it so it looked right) It worked beautifullly everyt carott straight and true. But this would have been expensive if I had to by the sand.