Despite drilling (sowing) the seed as deep as is safely possible, the seeds were killed by excessive temperatures, or triggered into some sort of dormancy and may germinate later in the Autumn. In some situations, the heat was killing the seed before it even started germination, and at other sites, seeds were germinating but the heat was drying up the soil before irrigations could be applied. According to Pete, the seeds have an inbuilt ‘defence mechanism’ so they know not to germinate when the temperatures are too high: “It didn’t matter how much water you were giving the seeds, they were never going to germinate when the soil temperatures were at 50 degrees – 40% of the water we were putting down was just evaporating straight off the soil”.ĭespite good seed bed preparation, seed drilling depth and irrigation management, emerging seedlings burnt as they reached the soil surface. When you have this staggered germination, you often see bigger plants that can get their roots down taking up all the water which means that smaller plants really struggle to grow”.īecause carrots are a temperature crop, they won’t grow when temperatures are above 25 degrees centigrade. Although we saw some of the seeds germinating straight away, others really struggled to come up. “The wet cold weather in the spring meant that seed sowing was delayed, so when the seedlings finally emerged they were at a much younger growth stage to what it typically would be to survive the summer heat. When we made a recent trip to our carrot supplier Alan Bartlett & Sons, based in beautiful East Anglia (above), we spoke with their agronomist, Pete Saunders, to get a better understanding about why this extreme weather has affected the growth of UK carrot crops in particular, and how this will affect the size of carrots that go into our boxes. Whilst the long, hot summer was great news for most of us, British carrot farmers were faced with crops of smaller, thinner carrots after the hot, dry weather prevented the vegetables from growing. From the Beast of the East to the scorching Summer heat-wave, 2018 has seen a year of extremely polarised seasons.
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