Carrots

By Kim Willis These articles are copyrighted and may not be copied or used without the permission of the author.

I consider carrots an intermediate gardening crop because while not difficult to grow many new gardeners fail miserably with them.  There are two reasons for that, failure to thin them enough and letting them get overgrown with weeds.  That said, carrots can be grown by nearly anyone and your soil is not a big factor.  There are carrot varieties that can grow in heavy soils.  Carrots are nutritious, tasty, and they store well.  They can be canned or frozen for preservation too.

Carrots are an old European crop, but they haven’t always been orange.  The orange color turned up only a few hundred years ago.  Originally domestic carrot roots were white, like their wild ancestors.  Now carrots also come in yellow, red and purple varieties.

Carrots are a biannual plant.  The first year they develop a good tap root and a feathery mass of bright green leaves.  We generally harvest them at this point, but if we left them to grow the second year they would develop a flower stalk with a lacy white flower.  The flower is similar to carrot’s wild cousin, Queen Anne’s Lace.  The flowers would soon curl up into a bird’s nest form with masses of tiny tan, striped seeds.  The seeds smell delightfully like carrots.

Carrot varieties

There are hundreds of carrot varieties.  Here are some suggested ones. For orange table carrots, long and slender roots: ‘Sugarsnax’, ‘Napa’, ‘Kuroda Appelsina’, ‘Tendersweet’, ‘Scarlet Nantes’.  If you have clay soil try these short or round varieties ‘Danvers Half Long’, ‘Fire Wedge’, ‘Oxheart’, ‘Atlas’ and ‘Rondo’.  For purple carrots try ‘Purple Haze’, Purplesnax’  or ‘Deep Purple’.  For red carrots try ‘Red Samurai’ or ‘Nutri-Red’.  For yellow carrots try ‘Yellowstone’ or ‘Yellowbunch’.  For a new hybrid white carrot try ‘White Satin’.  Many places carry a blend of seeds of various colors often called ‘Rainbow’.

Baby carrots can be any carrots pulled when they are still young and small.  The commercial baby carrots are actually odd shaped or broken carrots that are put into a machine that grinds them into fairly uniform, small pieces.  You’ll notice they don’t have any “peel”.   But there is some carrot varieties sold as baby carrot types.  They stay small and tender even at maturity.  ‘Mokum’, ‘Mignon’ and ‘Adelaide are some varieties.

Planting carrots

Carrots prefer loose sandy but richly organic soil.  Best soil pH is 6.0 -7.0. They will grow in heavier clay soils with good drainage but they will often have forked roots or have other odd root shapes.  Gardeners with heavy soil should choose carrot varieties that have short stocky roots or ball shaped roots instead of the long, cylindrical roots of commercial carrots.  They taste the same.

Carrots can be planted soil temperature reaches about 45 degrees.  This will usually be a few weeks before your last expected frost date. Optimum soil temps for germination are around 60 degrees, so consider waiting just a bit later into spring.  When soil temperatures get too hot – above 85 degrees germination will be poor.

Carrots should be planted where they are to grow.  They can be transplanted when very small, but this is impractical.  The seeds are very small and it’s hard to get them spaced evenly in a row.  You can buy seed tapes or carrot seed in pelleted form to make spacing easier.

Make sure the soil in the carrot bed has been well loosened by digging or tilling, to at least 8 inches deep.  Rake smooth and make sure it has no big clumps or rocks.  Work in an application of slow release fertilizer for vegetable gardens according to label directions.  Make a furrow about an inch deep and space the seeds along it.  Try to get them about a ½ inch apart.  Rows should be 12-18 inches apart.  If you are square foot planting without rows simply make a bunch of holes an inch apart and an inch deep.

Cover the carrot seed lightly only about half the depth of the furrow/hole.  Many people use sifted compost or soil or vermiculite for this covering so the seedlings can break through easily.  Moisten the soil gently so as not to wash the seeds around.  Expect germination in 6-21 days depending on soil and air temperature.  If it’s dry water the rows to keep the soil moist. 

If you decide to use seed tape lay it in the furrow and then drench it well with water.  Cover all of the tape ¼ to ½ inch deep and make sure it stays covered until the carrots germinate.  Exposed seed tape can wick water away from seeds and could result in poor germination.  If exposed pieces are caught by the wind the whole tape could be dislodged.

When the carrots have several leaves and are 2-3 inches high fill in the furrow or holes if they are still visible.  After the carrots have several more leaves and are 4-6 inches high you can hill up soil from the space between rows around them.  In square foot beds you could add an inch or so of sifted compost.

If you did a good job of spacing, you can thin out every other carrot while they are tiny but big enough to give you a couple of sweet bites.  If you didn’t do a great job of spacing, you may have to do several thinning operations until the carrots are about 2 inches apart.  Simply grasp the fronds and pull out the seedlings, the root should come out.  I have seen some people try and transplant these pulled plants but it’s usually not very successful.

If carrots are not thinned, you won’t get a healthy crop. The roots won’t develop properly, and you will get mostly top growth.

The other important thing to insure a good crop is to keep carrots weeded.  Carrots don’t compete well with weeds.  I like row planting with carrots because it’s easier to run a hoe or trowel down the rows and then follow up with a little hand weeding between plants.  You can mulch carrots to control weeds but wait until they are at least 3-4 inches high.

Carrots like consistent, even watering and don’t do well in drought unless watered.  If conditions are hot and dry and you don’t get rain for a week, give the carrot patch a good soaking.  It’s also good to water the day before you harvest a lot of carrots you want to preserve or store.  They will then be firm and crisp and last longer in storage without wilting.

If you worked some fertilizer into the soil or you have had a soil test and  your soil is pretty fertile you won’t need to fertilize the carrot crop.  Do rotate the place you plant carrots after 2 years.  Too much fertilizer can cause more top growth than root development.  Manure applied too close to planting is said to cause hairy roots.

Carrots are fairly easy to grow organically for home gardeners. Usually home gardeners have few problems with pests or diseases of carrots.  In some areas of the country carrot flies will lay eggs on the soil near carrots that will hatch into tiny maggots that feed on carrot roots.  If you have had this problem cover your carrot rows with floating row cover, anchored at the sides to prevent fly entry.

Harvesting Carrots

Depending on variety carrots will be mature anywhere from 65-90 days after you plant them.  Of course, carrots can be pulled and eaten anytime they are big enough for your taste.   I suggest home gardeners actually harvest carrots frequently when they are big enough to eat, pulling just enough for your current needs.  Near the first hard freeze you can pull any remaining carrots for canning, freezing or storage.

Although you hear of people simply mulching carrots heavily and then leaving them in the ground through winter, to harvest as needed, this method leaves much to be desired.  First it may be hard to harvest any of them if you get lots of snow.  Animals may find them before you do, mice and voles eat them underground and deer dig them up.  And it’s inconvenient and you will probably harvest and eat less of them than if you had stored them inside or preserved them.

When you harvest carrots you simply pull or dig them from the ground.  You can sometimes see from the top of the root sticking slightly above ground how big a carrot is; otherwise you pull a few test carrots.  When I harvest carrots I bring a small hand trowel with me and loosen the soil in the row next to them.  That way I get fewer carrots broken off or pulling the tops off without the root.  If you need lots of carrots for canning or freezing or want one harvest use a shovel and dig down on both sides before lifting the carrots. 

Try to get all the carrots out of the ground in the fall.  Carrots left over winter will sprout again in the spring, but once they do the carrot root will be woody and not very edible.  The plant will shortly go to flower and produce seeds, after which it will die.  Of course if you want carrot seeds this is what you will need to do.  Remember that seeds from hybrid plants will rarely produce any plants like the parent.

After they are dug or pulled shake off the dirt.  Leave the tops on if you are going to eat them in a few days.  Tops are also left on carrots that are sold at farmers markets. Carrots stored in “root cellar” conditions usually have the tops left on.  Trim the leaves back to a few inches if you are going to refrigerate the carrots for a few weeks. You can wash any carrots going into the refrigerator and of course before you eat them you’ll wash them. 

Carrots store best just above freezing- 34 degrees F and in high humidity (95%).  If held in these conditions carrots will store at least a couple of months.  In the refrigerator crisper it helps to wrap carrots loosely in plastic.  They’ll store for a couple weeks.

Carrots can be canned or frozen for longer preservation.  See the page at the right side of the blog called Fruit and Vegetable Canning for directions.

 (People sometimes plant the tops you cut off carrots before preparing them to eat.  The tops will grow but you will not get another carrot type root.  It makes a pretty plant for a bit then it tries to go to flower and set seed, after which it will die.)

Carrots are a good crop to interest small children in gardening and eating vegetables. They are also a nutritious and versatile crop. Beginning gardeners can get a good harvest if they just remember to thin them out and keep them weeded and watered.  If you are an experienced gardener and haven’t tried growing carrots why not give it a shot?