Please help this gardening disaster

[TheUnMember]

I so want to be able to garden, but I'm completely, utterly rubbish. I'm so fed up of paying for seeds and plants and putting in effort only for everything to still be dead and ugly. :(

Gardening dilemma #1: Growing carrots and onions

I have a raised box which my husband built for me and filled with plant earth. I want to grow carrots and onions in it. I bought carrot seeds, which it says to plant straight into the ground. I also bought onion seeds which it says can be started off indoors or planted straight out. I didn't know which would be best so started growing the onions in one of those windowsill germinator things.

They germinated about 4 weeks ago and very quickly grew into grass like strings about 10cm long. They are very thin and fragile looking. Since then they haven't appeared to grow any further. They're definately still alive (a miracle in itself).

Should I be doing something else?
At what point do I plant them out?
Shall I just plant the seeds in the ground instead?

Any help and advice will be gratefully received.

I would tend to grow things which are high value and fairly easy like lettuce, spring onion , radish , spinach, beetroot, French beans, I do small carrotts in a pot as they can go up high. Morrisons sell flower buckets, 10 for a quid , just put holes in the bottom and you can put tomatoes and courgettes in them as well as potatoes, cheaper than buying grow bags. . I don't grow onions as they are pretty cheap to buy and take up a lot of space but do grow shallots as they can be quite dear. Pound shops are good for getting onion/shallot sets which are much easier than the seeds. I also plant herbs at the corners of raised beds. Spinach is a great crop as well. Gardners world had a great article this month about growing vegetables in a small raised bed and it might also be on line .

I wanted to grow carrots really as I have a box with potatoes, one with peas and one with turnips (which turned out rubbish last year). I'm trying to build up to a 4 year rotation, but I can't cope with suddenly growing lots of different stuff. Started with potatoes. Next year moved them to new box and put peas in the old one. Last year moved them both across and put (rubbish) turnips in. So this year carrots will be the newby. I only tried the onions because my neighbour said that you shouldn't grow carrots without onions because of the bugs or something.

Would spring onions have the same effect? Or was my neighbour talking rubbish?

(I have a cognitive disability so have to take things really slowly. I'm probably pushing myself too far going onto something new without having mastered the previous step, ie rubbish turnips)

I think there is a theory that onions repel carrot fly which is probably what your neighbour is talking about which is why I grow mine in tubs so i can put them up high as the carrot fly can't fly too high. The smell of the onions or marigolds is meant to be strong enough to confuse the carrot fly so it doesn't notice the carrots ! Secret carrot growing. Not sure if it works. Or you can cover them with fleece/ Enviromesh which stops the fly getting in to lay eggs. Regarding turnip disaster, everybody has a disaster, should have seen my caulies last year , absolute rubbish despite me lavishing care on them !

Something ate all the leaves of the turnips so they didn't grow very well. Then we left them in the ground too long and we couldn't get them out because they were frozen. Then they went mushy. :o

Should have seen what the pigeons did to my cabbage. Sounds like flea beetle on the turnip leaves, I've got them eating my radish leaves at the moment, have heard that you can coat one side of carboard with treacle, wave the card just above infected plant and the beetles jump onto it and stick there. Am going to try that one

Yes to spring onions with carrots. Surround the carrots in them , masks the smell. Don't thin the carrots as the carrot fly smell them then too.

I killed everything last year, totally forgot to put my watering kit in over the week we went away, which of course was then the hottest dryest week of the year.
Actually the Radishes were a success, despite going to seed quite quickly. We discovered you can eat the seed pods, very yummy on salads.

Just watched some onion planting clips on youtube and am beginning to think my babies may just need a bit more time. They don't look that much smaller than the ones being planted out. Just more ... limp.

Might have a go next weekend. There's a frost predicted early next week here, so I think I should wait.

My husband tried to get our turnips out the ground with a hammer and chisel but they were having none of it :o

carrots in a raised bed may escape carrot root fly, which travels very close to the ground.

Now that we're past the risk of frost, I'd say put out, or sow, outdoors now. It will get more light. Put things thinly spaced to save having to pull up the exess later. If you want to sow into seed compost, you can trowel a groove into the soil and fill it with seed compost and when they're big enough, they will put their roots down through it into the soil. The purpose of sowing seed in rows is so that you can tell what are your seedlings and what are weeds.

You could grow chives with your carrot as they are in the same family as onions (just smell them) if you sow your carrots too thickly you can thin them and use the small carrots in salads etc. You could still plant out your onions they just need a bit more room and I would add a bit of fish,blood and bonemeal to the soil (This is an organic fertilizer, I always like to use this when I'm growing crops I'm going to eat!!!)

So I've planted them all out today. Alternate rows of carrots and my baby onions in one box. Turnips and sweetcorn in the next. Peas in the third and king edwards in the fourth. The cat kept trying to pull out the onions as I was putting them in which wasn't helpful. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed and see if anything comes up.