75 days from direct sowing.
Destined to be your favorite carrot in the garden, Merida Hybrid is a joy to grow, harvest, and especially eat! This Nantes type is ready more quickly than many other full-size varieties, and it offers wonderfully straight, blunt-ended roots of bright orange with almost no core and plenty of crisp, ultra-sweet flavor.
Merida is ready for harvest when it's about 6 inches long, though it will grow an additional inch or more if you need to delay the picking. Juicy, straight, and very uniform, it's a good choice for canning because all the roots are so reliably the same size and shape. But these carrots taste so good, they might not make it into the Mason jar!
The green tops make harvesting easy, too. Unlike some varieties, these greens grow thick, straight, and tall, so you can just grab and pull up the root. Very strong, they are nutritious as well.
Higher in vitamins A and B than their store-bought counterparts, home-grown carrots are also rich in calcium and phosphorus -- and they taste delicious! Merida is particularly packed with beta carotene, its tangerine color so bright it nearly glows!
Carrots are a cool-weather crop, best sown direct as soon as the soil is workable in spring, and sown successively every few weeks until midsummer. Heavy soils are one of the few serious problems for carrots, so prepare the soil thoroughly before planting or, if you are in a clay soil area, consider growing in raised beds or even containers. Carrots also need moisture to keep their roots from splitting. With these needs met, they are virtually trouble free!
Sow the seeds about an inch apart, pushing them just ¼- to ½-inch into the soil. When the seedlings appear, thin them to 4 to 6 inches apart (and be sure to chop up the green tops for soups and salads -- very nutritious and tasty!). Merida will reach about 12 inches above ground, and need about 4 inches of space underground. Onions make excellent companions in the vegetable garden.
