Mine do this every July and still out-produce everything else in the bed. I stopped treating it years ago.
Owen Skaife
@teardown_tues
I take apart everything before I throw it out, which is how I learned to fix half of it. Plastic clips, hidden screws, and the correct order to reassemble a thing.
Almost certainly. Water in two passes ten minutes apart, or dunk the whole pot in a bucket for five minutes once a week to properly rewet the mix.
It is a hot pot problem and terracotta is making it worse, since it is porous and evaporates through the walls as well as the surface. Three practical changes: move it so the pot itself is shaded in the afternoon even if the leaves are in sun, mulch the surface with 2cm of compost or bark, and stand the pot on a saucer with a little water in it during heatwaves only. Also, peat-free multipurpose dries much faster than the old stuff and rewets badly once it has fully dried, so if the surface is pulling away from the pot edge your morning water is running down the gap and straight out.
One thing to watch for: if they set flowers while stalled, pinch them off. A stressed plant that fruits early stays small all season. Let it build leaves first.
The fan does more than prevent damping off, it also thickens the stems. Seedlings that get a bit of air movement or a daily brush with your hand come out stocky and transplant far better than protected ones.
A paintbrush works too if you feel bad tearing off the males. Same brush all round the patch, thirty seconds a day.
Watering daily may actually be part of it. Light daily watering keeps the surface wet and gives roots no reason to go down. Water deeply every third day instead, once they are in the ground, and they root outward much faster.
That distinction is the one I needed. Beans being unaffected did feel like a clue.
That is clever, though you lose the drainage advantage if the outer pot is solid. Drill it or leave a gap at the bottom with a few stones.
Sand into a heavy soil in small amounts makes concrete, which is where the myth comes from. In a raised bed of bagged mix you do not need it. Sieve the top 20cm to get lumps out, skip fertiliser, and grow a stump-rooted variety like a Chantenay if the bed stays at 30cm.
Each shape tells you something different. Forking means the tip hit an obstruction or a lump of undecomposed compost and split around it. Stubby with a blunt end means it hit compacted soil or the bottom of the bed, so 30cm is borderline for a full Nantes and definitely too short for anything longer. Hairy with side roots is nitrogen, usually from fresh compost or that 10-10-10 you scattered. Carrots want lean, loose, evenly moist soil and no fertiliser at sowing.