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Carrots and leeks healthy?

Shoxt3rShoxt3r Posts: 196
in Fruit & veg
Hi all,

My carrots and leeks are looking a bit crammed in - do I need to space them out or are they ok?


Posts

  • SkandiSkandi Posts: 1,723
    First thing, I can't see a single carrot, all those lovely green things are tomatoes. There is only room for about 4 tomatoes and not much else in that pot. leeks would like a good 15cm spacing, but if you want smaller summer leeks they can be closer.
  • EmptyheadtimeEmptyheadtime Posts: 366
    Yes, very cramped looking. They will thank you for it.  I usually start my leeks off in one location then move them to their final location, making a finger sized hole a few inches apart to put them into. 
  • Shoxt3rShoxt3r Posts: 196
    Hmm ok sounds like some decisions need to be made about whether I grow tomatoes or leeks this year 😂.I already have 2 tomato plants in another raised bed haha.

    I definitely planted carrot seeds there so I guess they didn't do anything and perhaps seeds from previous tomato plants that have been there have germinated - oh well! I'll probably remove some tomato plants on one side to leave room for the leeks to be spaced out.

    I thought they looked like odd carrot plants based on previous years! 😂
  • Shoxt3rShoxt3r Posts: 196
    I had a bit of a busy lunchtime today taking out about 30 tomato plants of various sizes! I've left quite a few in there just to see what happens but taken all of the ones on the edges out and also those that are small seedlings. I've also taken out the smaller leeks to give them some space and then I'll check in every few days to see if any other tomato plants can be plucked out.




    Going forward is there anything I can do to stop this from happening again? My thought is that as tomatoes have dropped naturally into the ground (either during last Summer or maybe when I was clearing the dead plants away), they've seeded themselves and then grown up this year. Or, will it just be a case of trying to keep the plants at bay as they grow up so that other seeds/plants have a chance to grow in their place?
  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    You may as well take them out and start to regenerate your ground ready for next plantings.   They won’t do anything now, it’s too late in the season. 
    I don’t think the tomato seedlings have all come from tomatoes dropped on the soil. 
    Do you think that maybe you sprinkled a packet of carrot seeds there but picked up tomato seeds instead.
    going on the fact that there’s not a single carrot seedling leads me to believe there was a mix up in the seeds. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    I don't understand how 'tomatoes dropped naturally to the ground' ... don't you pick them and eat them?  Not a single ripe or unripe tomato goes unused in this household. 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Shoxt3rShoxt3r Posts: 196
    edited July 2021
    To be honest I'm really not sure how they got there but we did have a bumper crop last year and when the plants became slightly diseased towards the end of the season, I found some rotten tomatoes in the raised bed (did my best to clear them out).

    However, it is odd that they have mainly sprung up after planting the "carrot" seeds. They were the ones that came in the Gardener's World magazine (the one that came with 6x packs of seeds and the 2 for 1 gardens membership). Who knows really!

    Some of the plants have grown up further in the last couple of days so I'm inclined to leave them a bit longer and see what happens - some even have some buds.
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