Growing Carrots in Your Vegetable Garden

Until recently, about the only carrot varieties found in
seed catalogues were the good-eating Nantes; the short,
stout Chantenay; the hefty Imperator; and the long, slender
Danvers. Today, these have all been improved, and a host of
new hybrids, including carrots with white, yellow, crimson,
or purplish roots, have come on the scene. There are early
and late types, with the time from planting to harvest
ranging from 55 to 80 days. Carrots also come in all sizes
and shapes: fat, slender, medium-sized, round,
finger-length and bite-sized midgets.

The taste and texture of a carrot are more likely to depend
on proper cultivation in a good soil than on the choice of
a particular cultivar, but varieties can have special
qualities. For example, Tip Top (a large Nantes) is great
for juicing; Juwarot (a Danvers) has nearly double the
vitamin A content of most carrots; King Midas is disease-
and crack-resistant; thick-shouldered Goldinheart (a
Chantenay) does well in heavy soils and freezes nicely;
Belgium White is especially delicious in salads; Baby
Finger Nantes is excellent for cooking; and Golden Ball
(early, round, two-inch-diameter) is ideal for shallow
soil.

In choosing a carrot, it’s a general rule to select one
with a short root if your dirt is heavy. These smaller
versions are also best suited for growing in containers.
Carrots, in fact, are among the easiest vegetables to grow,
and the success of your crop will rest almost entirely on
the quality of the soil.

Where to Plant Carrots

The best growing medium for carrots is sandy loam and the
worst is heavy clay, but any plot can be made suitable with
adequate manuring and composting–and carrots thrive
in raised beds. Try using two buckets of compost and two of
leaf mold to each square yard of heavy dirt. Add sand, if
necessary. Though leaf mold can be worked in at planting
time, beds should be composted and manured at least six
months before sowing. Otherwise, your carrots will be
tough, watery, knobby and forked, with many side rootlets.
Too much nitrogen also gives carrots a poor taste. A prime
location for a carrot patch is where a crop, especially of
such light feeders as peas, was heavily manured the year
before.

If the soil is acid, add lime to bring the pH to around
6.3. Adequate potash (in the form of green sand, crushed
granite or kelp meal) and phosphate (try soft phosphate,
bone meal or phosphate rock) will insure good flavor.
Incorporating peat into the soil is helpful, too, because,
while the carrot patch should be well drained, it shouldn’t
be dry, and peat will both encourage drainage in a clay
soil and hold moisture in a sandy medium.

To avoid deformed carrots, dig or plow the patch deeply and
rake thoroughly. Lumps and stones should be removed, using
a garden sieve if necessary.

In selecting a plot for your carrot patch, keep the
following in mind: The plants like full sun, but will
tolerate partial shade. They also prefer ground
temperatures between 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. If the earth is
too warm, roots may be stunted; if too cold, they become
pale and skinny. Heavy mulch will also keep ground
temperatures cool and help retain needed moisture.

How to Plant Carrots

Because carrots are usually planted as a cool-weather crop,
it’s often recommended that they be sown in the very early
spring in temperature climates and in the fall or winter in
subtropical regions. In fact, you can plant your first crop
three weeks before the soil even warms up. To enjoy a long
harvest of fresh carrots. plant again every two to three
weeks. The last temperature-climate planting should be,
depending on the variety, two to three months before the
average date of the first fall frost. Sow enough at this
time to assure a supply of carrots throughout the winter
and into early spring.

Carrot seeds are very tiny. (One ounce will sow 100 feet or
more.) Some gardeners broadcast the seeds, but it’s easier
to avoid accidentally weeding them out if they are planted
in rows. Put about six seeds to the inch, pinching them
between finger and thumb to control the amount planted.

Germination will be slow–usually occurring in 10 days
to three weeks. It helps, then, to mix in quick-sprouting
radish seeds to mark the rows. Harvesting the radishes or
lettuce will provide the carrots with some natural thinning
and keep the soil loose.

Cover the seeds with 1/4 to 1/2 inches of loose soil. (In
dryer, warmer places, you can plant a little deeper.)
Carrots need moisture to germinate, so water gently, being
careful not to wash the seeds away.

When the tops are about two inches high, start thinning. Be
ruthless, or you’ll end up with small, deformed carrots
that often entwine around each other. Besides, you’ll enjoy
eating these tender, sweet culls in salads. Continue
thinning until the vegetables are spaced three to four
inches apart.

Don’t let the carrot bed dry out, and soak it thoroughly
when watering. As the crop matures, though, cut back on the
water to prevent the carrots from cracking. Keep weeds away
with shallow cultivation, and hand-pull any invaders in the
rows themselves, since bruised carrots attract carrot rust
flies.

What Carrot Pests to Watch For

Many garden books will tell you that carrots have no
significant pests or diseases. This is often true, but
there are some dangers you should know about, and the
carrot rust fly is one of them. Most prevalent in the
Northwest, it looks like a tiny housefly with a dark
green,1/4-inch-long body and yellow head with red eyes. Its
eggs, which it lays on the plants, hatch into whitish
larvae that burrow into the roots, turning them a dark red.
The first above ground sign is carrot leaves turning a dark
black. Since infestations usually occur in the early
spring, delaying planting until early summer can avoid the
problem. Maggots from a second generation of adult flies
later in the summer seldom cause much damage.

The fly is attracted by the carrots’ odor, so try
interplanting rows of carrots with rows of onions, which
could deter both the carrot and the onion fly, since the
scent of one crop will cover that of the other. Remember,
too, that thinning releases the aroma of the foliage. Since
the carrot fly is seldom around during the evening, cull at
that time or on a day with a light rain. Crop rotation also
helps to avoid this pest.

The carrot worm, the larva of the black swallowtail
butterfly, is a green caterpillar with black stripes and
white or yellow dots that sticks out little orange horns
when threatened. Handpick these in the morning, or use
Bacillusthuringiensis or rotenone.
Handpicking or rotenone will also take care of carrot
weevils, while infestations of aphids can be controlled
with ladybugs, hard hose-sprays, sticky traps, garlic
sprays, wood ashes or garden-quality diatomaceous earth.

Wireworms (hard-shelled, jointed, reddish brown and up to 1-1/2 inches long) can be controlled by strewing wood ashes
between the rows.

Sandy-soil gardeners may have trouble with nematodes:
microscopic roundworms that make little knots along
rootlets and stunt the carrots. If you have this problem,
dose the soil with healthy humus before your next sowing,
since compost is rich in predatory microorganisms.

Leaf blight is among the most common carrot diseases. It
produces white to yellowish spots on leaves (these
discolorations eventually turn brown). It can be remedied
by spraying the plants with a copper-lime mixture or
avoided altogether by preheating the seeds in 126 degrees Fahrenheit
water for 10 minutes or by planting a blight-resistant
variety.

Mosaic, which is spread by aphids, mottles leaves with
light to dark shades of green. It can be prevented by
controlling the aphids.

Hot, humid weather sometimes brings on vegetable soft rot,
a bacterial disease that discolors the foliage and causes
the roots to become soft, slimy and foul-smelling. (It can
also strike stored carrots, so cull any bruised roots and
make sure the harvested crop is aerated.) Loose,
well-drained soil and crop rotation are the best
preventives.

However, the main danger to your carrot crop will not be
insects and diseases, but such larger pests as deer,
gophers, ground hogs and rabbits. A good fence or dog is
your best defense against these animals. Pouches of dog
hair or human hair, or bars of soap hung around the garden,
can also act as deterrents to deer. Rabbits are said to be
turned back by sprinkling wood ashes, garlic powder, chili
powder, ground red pepper or talcum powder about the bed.
(Replenish after rains.) Ground hogs usually have to be
shot or trapped, but you can also plant onions and garlic
around their burrows or lure them away from the garden with
plots of alfalfa or clover, their favorite foods. Plant
castor bean or mole plants to deter gophers–but not
if small children ate around, since these are poisonous.
You can also spray a mixture of one tablespoon of castor
oil and one tablespoon of liquid detergent to a gallon of
water on the ground and plants, use baited traps, or put
chili and garlic powder in the tunnels every week.

How to Harvest and Store Carrots

The younger the carrots, the tenderer they’ll be. A small
head or crown of orange will appear at the soil line when
the carrots are maturing. If they poke their heads too far
out of the soil, mound dirt or mulch over them to prevent
greening of the shoulders. Pull only those carrots you’ll
need, since the roots will stay fresh in the ground for
quite a while.

Gather your winter carrots before the first frost. Pick a
day when the soil is moist but the air is dry. You can lift
the carrots with a spading fork, but be careful not to
bruise them, since bruised roots can’t be stored. It’s
better to harvest by hand, using a trowel if necessary to
loosen the dirt.

Properly stored fresh carrots keep well, retain their
flavor and have a higher nutritional value than preserved
ones, so you can simply twist off the leaves and place the
unwashed roots–not touching–between layers of
sand or peat in boxes or plastic trash cans topped with
straw. The containers should be kept in a cool, frost-proof
place. If it’s not feasible to keep them indoors, you can
bury your surplus in a straw-lined trench, covered with a
thin layer of dirt.

To can your harvest, top, clean, scrape, and cut the roots
into sections. Pack in jars with water and process in a
pressure canner at 10 pounds of pressure for 30 minutes for
quarts, 25 minutes for pints.

Freeze carrots as soon as possible after they’re pulled.
Choose small specimens, cut off the tops, wipe with a damp
cloth, blanch for two minutes, cool, pat dry, pack, and
freeze. Mature carrots can be scraped, sliced, cut into
cubes and blanched for three minutes before freezing.
They’ll add a bright touch to winter soups and stews. But
if you’re stressed or up-tight, pull a raw root out of
storage and munch away. You’ve nothing to lose–and a
lot of nutrition to gain.

Carrot-Pineapple-Cream Cheese Salad Recipe

2 cups finely grated carrots
2 cups pineapple chunks, fresh or canned
1 or 2 packages cream cheese
1/2 onion, finely grated
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Mound grated carrots in the center of a dish. Place
pineapple chunks and squares of cheese around carrots.
Sprinkle onions and lemon juice on top of the carrots.
Serve with slices of slightly toasted and buttered whole
wheat or rye bread.

Orange-Almond Carrots Recipe

1 pound carrots, scraped and cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon margarine
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Steam carrots for 15 to 20 minutes or until tender. Combine
orange juice, honey, margarine, salt and lemon rind in a
saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered for 5
minutes. Add carrots, stir in almonds and cook just enough
to heat. Garnish with parsley. Serves 4 to 6.