compost in container ruined my vrg

**snohare** · 28-08-2011, 06:37 PM

Carrots like well drained soil (free draining is how it is often described) so you often might add sand to the soil you grow them in. Many composts nowadays have peat substitutes like Sincra to retain moisture, you may find that these have done too well and that's the source of your problem.
Personally I usually riddle (sieve) soil for the veg I am growing in pots, particularly the root vegetables, but the germination tends to be patchy with fine soil particles - they are prone to binding together once wetted and forming a surface crust, this is called "capping" - so you are best off using a thin layer of multipurpose compost on the top, and sowing your seeds into that.
The other problem you may have had is low temperatures. I don't know about you, but here in the North-East of Scotland we have had abysmally low temperatures throughout August, it feels like late September at times; as a result all my small seedlings have barely grown. I have put my root veg under Enviromesh to see if that will help them, but many of the leafy veg I have just about given up on.

Love the name by the way !

**Jono** · 28-08-2011, 06:55 PM

I do the layer of multi-purpose trick now (picked the tip up from this forum

) and it works really well. Definitely recommend trying that.

I seem to remember reading that carrots don't necessarily like rich soil, so maybe the compost is too much? Might be coincedental, but my best carrots this year, completely by accident, are an ad-hoc container sowing in soil that hasn't had any nutrients put back in it at all for ages.

**maytreefrannie** · 29-08-2011, 10:58 AM

I got good results a couple of years ago, growing in containers with loads of sand, 50% or more of sand to soil.

**taff** · 29-08-2011, 11:12 AM

how big were the troughs and where did you have them placed?

**Snadger** · 29-08-2011, 03:43 PM

I don't think it was the compost that did for you but rather the summer of inclement weather!

**Florence Fennel** · 29-08-2011, 03:50 PM

Welcome to the Vine Dandylion. Whereabouts are you in the country? Somewhere a bit chilly maybe? It would help folks to give you advice if you put your location into your profile. As others have said, carrots like fairly poor or sandy soil, so your compost mix might have been too rich.

**endymion** · 29-08-2011, 11:33 PM

Some of the cheaper composts don't contain very much in the way of nutrients, so plants growing in containers need feeding after just a few weeks because their roots can't get into soil and search for food.

Also, if you put too much drainage material (bricks, polystyrene etc) in there simply might not have been enough compost for the plants to grow well. If containers are raised off the ground they don't need a lot of extra stuff in the bottom, the water will just drain downwards and out through the holes.

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