Carrots

The weather is finally becoming more fall like and the only things I have left in the garden are Carrots and Dahlias.  It will still be a few more weeks before I will dig the Dahlias.  

The carrots have done exceptionally well this year.  They germinated well in the mild April weather and then thrived in the cool wet May.  I planted four varieties in containers and one variety in seed tape along the back of the strawberry cages where I previously had Parsnips.  With my shallow raised beds I have to choose my Carrot locations carefully.  They need deep, loose soil to grow long and straight.  I have been growing them in containers with potting mix for quite a few years now and get very good results.  But it was kind of nice to have some growing in the ground because the containers require dedicated watering.

I pulled Carrots from containers all summer to use in salads.  When the foliage started getting a little rough looking, as it does every August, I just cut it all back to about two inches to see what would happen.  It came back fresh and green and one container has started putting out flowers.  I've never had this happen and assume this is because I cut the foliage back and tricked the plant into thinking that it was the second year.

Nantes and/or Sugarsnax flowering like Queen Anne's Lace

These carrots had become next to impossible to pull one by one because they were so rooted in.  I dumped one container and was curious to see what the overall root systems looked like.  They had pretty much taken up the entire pot.  

That's a pretty strong secondary root situation!

I started breaking the soil away from the side and the carrots came out easily.

Rotild on the left and King Midas on the right

I cut the foliage off and rinsed the worst of the soil off and put them all in a plastic bag in the hydrator.  The less you handle them the longer they keep well.  I will probably end up cutting these, blanching and freezing them.  

The Carrot tape did very well despite infrequent watering.  The soil is pretty good here, but they are still pushing themselves up out of the ground.  The variety is YaYa, which is a sweet, Nantes type. I like the Nantes Carrots because of their blunt ends.

  I feel somehow that there is less waste if I know where to trim the root as opposed to a tapered "Imperator" type Carrot where you have to decide just how much of the root is useable.  But I still plant those too because I love pulling a long, slender Carrot.

Last year's Sugarsnax Carrots

The great thing about Carrots is that they get sweeter in cold weather.  I cannot leave them in containers over winter because they will freeze solid and turn to mush, but the Yaya Carrots in the ground can be left for quite awhile.  If I were to cover them deeply with straw or leaves to insulate the ground I might be digging them in the middle of winter and adding fresh, sweet carrots to my Crockpot meals.