Carrots are a simple root vegetable to grow in your garden. They are a delicious fall crop, or somewhat early spring crop, and come in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. Growing carrots is also a great way to get kids involved in the garden, especially if they already like eating carrots.
Carrots are a mainstay in my garden. They are fairly simple to grow, despite the fine seed size. They are easy to store for winter. Carrots are also a well-known, and hugely versatile vegetable with many different culinary uses. They appeal to grandkids, kids, and adults.
I plant carrots because of the deliciousness too. The flavor of a fresh, homegrown carrot, especially in my zone 3 garden, cannot be compared to store bought carrots grown in warmer areas. Carrots are hardy to light touches of frosts, and can survive when I get frost in June and July, and the frost brings out the sweetness of the carrot’s roots.
Growing Carrot Types:
When growing these delicious, usually orange root vegetables, it’s important to chose a variety that works with your soil type. Most carrot varietises like a light loamy, or slightly sandy soil to grow in. It helps them develop straight roots, and helps the roots thicken out too, without too much branching.
Nantes or Danvers are a slightly stubby carrot, that works well in denser soils. You can grow these ones in slightly clay soils without having to amend with sand and change your soil texture. There’s also a tiny variety, Parisinne, or as I call them “thumbelina” carrots, that are smaller than a golf ball and perfectly round. These also do well in heavy soils, though they are quite small roots overall.
In addition to your standard orange colored roots, you can find yellow, redish, white, and even purple and black varieties. The darker purple and red varieties are higher in antioxidants than their orange cousins. I like the yellow varieties as they have a similar root shape to Danvers shorts, and thrive in slightly dense soil. The white ones can be confused for parsnips, though the flavor is very different.
Planting:
After choosing your carrot varieties, the best time to plant carrots is at the same time as radishes. Or, about two weeks before your last frost date (unless you’re in the south, then a fall planting is preferred). The garden bed should be free of weeds and lightly dug. It doesn’t need to be tilled. Soil temperature can be as low as 7C or as high as 30C for planting. For fall planting, aim for the high end, and for spring planting aim for the low end of the range.
Sow the carrot seed thinly in rows, following seed packet instructions. Rows should be 2″ apart, and seeds should be less than an inch deep, about a quarter of an inch in depth due to their tiny size and firmly firmed in. Make sure your carrot patch is in full sun, especially if you’re in the north. If you’re southern, afternoon shade may be necessary.
If you have limited garden space, growing carrots in a square foot pattern with seeds spaced about two inches apart in a square, rather than row, configuration, can work well. It also reduces weeding, and helps conserve water.
Some gardeners like to sow seeds for radishes with their carrot seeds. This is because radish seeds only take 30-40 days to come to maturity, so the radishes help mark the carrot rows while shading the young carrot seedlings and helping them not dry out. By the time the carrots start to germinate and thrive, you’ll be harvesting radishes and giving the carrots plenty of space.
The carrot’s seed leaves and starting foliage looks a lot like a fine grass, so make sure you mark your rows somehow. After the carrots are an inch or two high, and you can see the delineation of the carrot plants, you’ll want to thin the carrots to about an inch apart. I like thinning to half an inch apart, then going back after the carrots have gotten crowded and harvesting every second carrot, or so, for early baby carrots. Yum!
Another trick is to cover the newly planted carrot seed with a board or piece of wet cardboard that’s weighted down. Check daily to see if the seeds have germinated. When they germinate, remove the board so they can get sunlight and thrive. The board helps keep moisture on the tiny seeds, and improves germination rate.
When growing carrots you don’t need heavy fertilizer, heavy nitrogen delays root growth. I’d plant carrots the year after something like tomatoes, and follow the carrots with peas or beans the next year for nitrogen balance. An early top dressing of compost as part of preparing the seed-bed should be sufficient. Some add a fertilizer that is high in phosphorus, since that encourages root growth, but I’d avoid blood meal unless you need to repel deer or rabbits due to the high nitrogen. Bone meal may also be useful.
After, or while you’re waiting on the carrots to germinate, I’d also mulch the garden bed with a nice layer of straw or old, second cut, hay. Make sure your straw or hay has not been treated with herbicides though.
Carrot Pests:
There are a few carrot pests that could affect your plants. Carrot rust flies are a major one. It affects the foliage of the plant, and can also affect root growth. The larval stage of the carrot rust fly is a root maggot that can also affect your crop. If you have these pests in your area, covering the carrots with floating row covers can help prevent them. Same with carrot weevils.
Nematodes can also end up affecting carrot root formation, since they attack the roots. Planting marigolds near your rows of carrots can help prevent nematode damage, and provide a spot of color and variety within your garden. I also like planting some herb plants near the carrots, like dill, parsley, or sage. These scented herbs also help distract and repel pest insects, like leafhoppers, while attracting insects that predate on pest insects like lacewings.
If you’re interested in companion planting, you can check out this post and this post, for more info.
Harvesting Carrots:
Harvest carrots once they reach maturity by digging them up with a garden fork. Sometimes pulling them by hand works, but other times it snaps off the tops and leaves the roots in the ground. I’ve found the tops snap easy on most carrot varieties, so I like loosening the carrots up a bit with a garden fork in between the rows. I try not to hit the carrot roots with the fork though.
The diameter of your mature carrots will vary depending on your variety. Some varieties have a large diameter, like Ox heart carrot that’s nearly three inches in diameter. Fingerling varieties are ready at a mere half inch or less in diameter. Most standard orange, yellow, white, and purple varieties are ready at about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter. Pull one to check, and taste, and if you’re happy with the carrot, you can harvest any carrots in the row that are the same size. As long as there’s no threat of your first frost, the still small carrots can be left to continue growing a little longer.
A row cover can help ward off your first frost too, so that any still small carrots have a chance to grow a bit larger before harvest.
Winter Storage:
When growing carrots winter storage is an important aspect of the harvest. Most people are growing carrots for a fall harvest, since the root vegetable is easy to store for winter with minimal preparation or preservation.
Some people recommend storing carrots in damp sand, in a cold storage room, for the winter. This works, as long as you have very clean sand and only dampen it down to approximate soil moisture levels. Too damp sand can negatively impact the store-ability of your carrots.
Larger carrots store best in cold storage, whether in sand or bags. So make sure you sort your carrots, clean them of any debris, and remove any damaged ones, before setting up your winter carrot storage. You don’t want to waste the efforts you put into growing carrots this year.
Another option is simply to store the clean, washed carrots in burlap bags in your cold storage. The burlap lets them breathe, helps prevent mold, and you can use slightly wilted carrots in soups, stews, and as puree with no issues. If you want crisp carrots, storing them in an even cooler spot like the refrigerator is necessary.
One friend of mine actually stores her winter carrots in her garden. She simply mulches with 6″ of straw in early fall, before the first frost, and then digs off the snow and mulch to retrieve carrots from the ground during the winter. Now, while this works well for her, there have been a few winters where she lost carrots to voles. So if you have lots of voles or pocket gophers around your property, this method may not work for you.
Getting Started:
If you don’t have a garden, space for a garden, or time for a full garden, you may still be able to grow your own food. You can grow small carrots in containers, fingerling and Parisienne carrots can be grown in semi deep pots. Or, you can focus on salad greens and microgreens.
New to growing food and vegetables?
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