Carrots in a container

My first attempt to grow carrots in a container failed miserably. The seeds never germinated. Then couple of months ago, got Super Kuroda.

Sowed the seeds in a 6"deep container on the 16th of July, 2013 and the seeds germinated in less than 10 days. The potting mix a combination of 2 parts of coco-peat and 1 part of organic fertilizer from a local nursery. Carrots prefer smooth soil, and having pebbles, stones in the potting mix can restrict the growth or the carrot would look monstrous.
The below pic of a similar container and seeds were sowed, roughly about a week back.

This needs to be thinned, I sowed 3 to 4 seeds together with a gap of 2". The carrots need atleast 2 months to mature. But it also depends on the variety, climate and potting mix. The season I chose was rainy and there was plenty of rainfall in India this time. But Bangalore moderate climate should allow you to grow carrots all round the year. But it needs to be well fed with water. Adding woodash (a good source of potassium), would result in sweeter carrots.
My container looked pretty beautiful at the end of two months:

You can harvest the carrots once you can see the crown popping out.








Harvested 8 carrots so far and almost about 14 more carrots are left in the container to be harvested later.

Happy Gardening!!!

Growing Coriander & Fenugreek (Methi) in container

There are few seeds which are readily available in any Indian household.
Coriander & Methi fall in that category.

Coriander seed is a dicot. It has to be split into two before sowing for early results. Sowing it as a whole just slows the process and makes no difference in quality. The seeds look like this:

Forgot to take a close up pick. Maybe you'll find a close up picture in my earlier posts or try Google images.

For splitting the seeds, you could cover the seeds in a cloth, put them in a bag and rub the seeds with a slipper. Don't apply too much pressure, you might damage the seeds.




Fenugreek (Methi) is a monocot. And the seeds like:

Following my past experience with containers, I picked up a tub which is 6" deep and filled it with a mix of cocopeat and compost. I have used 30% of compost and rest of it is cocopeat.

Draw lines with index finger or with a stick to make markings where you want to sow the seeds. I decided to go with 3 lines of Coriander & 3 lines of Methi.

And this how it looks after sowing the seeds.







I sprinkled a thin layer of cocopeat on top of the sown seeds. Now waiting to see the results.

Note: Fenugreek (Methi) needs less of Nitrogen and enriches the soil with Nitrogen.

Updates:
Was amazed to see the seeds sprout in 3 days. Really happy with the progress :)
Presenting pics over last one week and the one in the middle was taken today

Today's pic: 18/08

26/08: