Have we left the carrots too late? We sowed two types this year – one early variety and one late – but it’s only in the last couple of weeks that we’ve started to fork them up.

The results haven’t been very good.

They’ve tasted fine. The small ones are sweet, and the big ones are the most vibrant orange, and the strongest-tasting carrots we’ve ever had. But in the months they’ve been in the ground the slugs have got at a few of them, and some of the tops have been opened up and pitted by deep black scars.

It’s not attractive.

We’ve been cutting them out, of course, but some of them are so large that we’ve been losing half a carrot at a time. One, last night, was trimmed down from a good four inches to just one. It was barely worth peeling.

This time last year we’d finished the carrots and there’s no doubt it was a better crop. Short of using chemicals next year, though, what can we do to keep the slugs at bay?

Related posts:

1. The last carrots
2. Monster carrots
3. Pulling the first carrots