Carrots are one of my family’s favorite vegetables. We love them cooked in soups and stews and raw in salads and snacks. My only problem with carrots is that I’m not very good at growing them!  

As much as I try to sow the seeds individually with a couple of inches of space between them, I always end up sowing two or three seeds in the same spot which I rationalize as being ok by saying that I’ll correct my error later by thinning them. The thing is that thinning carrots is one of the last things I want to do on a warm July day. So I became resigned to having small harvests of small, poorly spaced carrots and life went on.  

But all that changed the year that I discovered pelleted seeds. The thinking behind pelletization is simple: make a small seed bigger and easier to see and handle.  Since switching to pelleted carrot seeds, I’ve been able to grow bigger carrots by sowing the seeds in a grid pattern as opposed to rows. I plant about 9 seeds to a square foot but you can do even more if you’re going for small, gourmet baby carrots.  More importantly, since making the switch I haven’t had to thin a single carrot which frees up time for more appealing hot July tasks like muddling my mint into a mojito.    

It’s true that pelleted seeds cost more than unpelleted ones (they can be purchased through most online seed companies), but they pay for themselves in terms of the time saved and in the bounty of your harvest. So pick up pelleted seeds and give them a try this summer.