…are rather difficult to grow – if you don’t want to have them riddled with worms and attacked by the dreaded carrot fly.

I have tried different ways of growing them, ever since I started on the allotment, never completely successfully. I planted onions between rows of carrots – no luck; Seeds of marigolds in between rows of carrots didn’t do much either, nor did a fleece fence around the carrot bed.

This time I’m trying a different method. I’ve got a long and quite deep wooden box, without bottom, it sits directly on the soil. I’ve filled it with sharp sand almost all the way up and then added a thin layer of soil on top. I will carefully sow the carrots into this and wait how well (or not) they’ll do. It can’t be much worse than all the other previous efforts!