Are carrots hard to grow?

Back in 1997 when I first took over my allotment plot I sowed some carrot seeds which duly grew into carrots. It was only after that that I read how difficult carrots are to grow and ever since then I have struggled to grow carrots. Not withstanding the blasted carrot root fly that can turn perfectly decent carrots into riddled sticks of infestation, the biggest problem seems to be getting the seeds to germinate. I have tried all sorts of things to coax them into life, including pampering them with a soft sand lined drill to sow them into. I was also once advised by someone on the kitchen gardens group that carrot seeds need to be watered every day for a fortnight after sowing. Ha! Who has got the time to pander to plants like that?

Now, let me see, it has been 3 weeks since I sowed my carrot seeds. And since then it has rained every day. Oh what joy to behold on the allotment this Saturday - neat rows of lush green vegetation... Oh, I wish!! No, instead, bare soil where the carrots should have been. So what happened? Did they germinate in the lovely rain only to be eaten by the few slugs that hadn't succumbed to the deathly lines of slug pellets? Or maybe they germinated but got stuck beneath the hard packed crust of clay soil that seems to have developed due to the rain and sun combo. Or maybe they just failed to germinate altogether. Ho hum. I have now resown the carrot seeds in the same place and hope that whatever caused the problem first time is no longer an issue. I notice that the few I sowed on my girls veg plots have germinated just fine so at least I know the seeds aren't duds. And I can, of course, comfort myself with knowing that you can in fact buy carrots from the supermarket so if all else fails we won't go carrotless this year but by God I'm determined to get a few to grow!