Carrot Catastophe

Much to my dismay, my carrots have failed me!

I have been watching them get taller and taller over the last few weeks, but of late they have been beginning to produce flower heads. I thought that if I gave them a good pruning that they would put they're energy back into the root rather than the flower and foliage.

I happened to bump into a friend of mine Ben, also a keen gardener, and told him of my problem. He advised me that carrots do this sometimes and that once they have 'gone to seed' (producing flower heads) they are completely useless and will not grow into a full sized carrot, pruned or otherwise. The reason for this can be a number of things but the two most common are lack of water (even for one day) or that they have become too hot in the sun, even for a short amount of time. The best advice he could give me was to pull up all the ones with flower heads and to keep an eye on the others. I can still plant carrot seed right up until the end of July so, as I have had to pull so many, I'm going to plant a load more where the peas had been ... or should I say had bean!