I have to tell you about the wonderful carrots we are eating right out of our garden this winter. The carrots you see in the photo were pulled January 18, swished in a bucket of water to take the mud off and photographed right in the garden. We had our first snow of the year the night before and you can see that didn’t bother them. The varieties I planted are Danvers 126 (on the left in the photo) and Chantenay Red Core (on the right). The seeds came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. In their catalog both varieties were listed as having a blunt end, with Danvers growing to 6½’’ long and 2’’at the shoulders and Chantenay 5½’’ long and 2½’’ at the shoulders. I have done a taste test and looked at both varieties side-by-side and I have to say, unless I was really looking for differences, I wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. One was ever so slightly sweeter, but they were both so sweet, it didn’t matter. The carrots of both varieties varied in size. I cut the larger ones into carrot sticks to eat raw and put the small ones into soups and cooked dishes. A favorite snack (or quick lunch) of mine is to cut carrots into sticks and use crunchy peanut butter as a dip. Delicious!
To have all these carrots available now took some planning. They were planted back on June 27 into a bed that I had harvested rye from, cutting it at maturity for grain and straw. The planning, however, went back further than that. The rye was planted on November 3, 2011. Knowing that I intended to plant carrots next, I made furrows close together with a hoe and planted the seed in the furrows. Otherwise, I would have just broadcast the seed and chopped it in with my cultivator to cover it. When rye and wheat are harvested at full maturity, the roots are already on their way out and the soil is soft. The stubble was in rows and I just hoed between those stubble rows and sowed the carrot seeds, covering lightly. The brown stubble that was left in place gradually decomposed, feeding the carrots. I had to be diligent with watering and replant in a couple areas that had not-so-good germination, but I have been rewarded well. This photo was taken on November 22—Thanksgiving. On the left is the carrot bed we are eating from now and the rye that I planted on October 23. You can see the rows in anticipation for next year’s carrots.
Although these carrots were outside the part of the garden that I keep intense records on, I couldn’t resist finding out how much was really there. Of course, I wasn’t going to dig the whole bed all at once to find out. Neither was I going to weigh each carrot I harvested, something I would have done if I was keeping those intense records. Instead, I dug carrots from a 2’ strip for each variety. The bed is 4’ wide, so I was measuring how much was in 8 ft². From that measurement I calculated how much it would work out to for a 100 ft² planting. The results were 115 lb/100 ft² for the Danvers and 145 lb/100 ft² for the Chantenay. I think these are accurate estimates and the yield could have even been a bit higher. I had randomly harvested some carrots previously, so some could have already been taken from these areas. In this trial Chantenay yielded more than Danvers, however since I wasn’t paying too much attention to details (such as randomly harvesting earlier) I wouldn’t say that one variety out yielded the other—yet. Maybe I’ll be more serious about it next year.
Once carrots (and other root vegetables) get hit with frost they sweeten up. Eliot Coleman writes about that in Four Season Harvest. For that reason I only grow carrots for fall and winter harvest these days. Sort of like enjoying strawberries when they are in season. Summer carrots just don’t taste as good and there are so many other things to be eating from the garden in the summer. I need to plant the carrots so that they will be mature by mid-October. Keep in mind that once the nights cool down, growth slows. After mid-October they are just being held in cold storage in the garden until we eat them. If you have been following my blog you know I have trouble with voles. One end of this bed has had some vole damage, but not the devastation you would expect. That could be because I didn’t mulch these carrots. If we were to have harsher weather than we do, I would mulch with leaves, but not until the cold weather really sets in. I want the voles to find other winter homes before I cover the carrots.
At Christmas I usually give sauerkraut to some friends and family. This year I hadn’t made sauerkraut. I was celebrating the carrots that were bursting from that bed that I had tended all year, so everyone received carrots. I’m not sure they were as excited receiving the carrots as I was giving them, but oh well. Maybe I’ll get sauerkraut made for them next year—with carrots in it.
If you would like to be eating carrots like this in mid-winter, keep that in mind as you make your garden plan for this year. I actually make a note on my garden map to plant the rye in rows in that bed so I don’t forget. You’ve missed the window of opportunity to have rye planted in rows for this year, but maybe you can sneak some carrots in somewhere. Make sure to plant them early enough and water well. Good luck!
Learn more about winter carrots at http://www.motherearthnews.com/permaculture/winter-carrots.aspx
Cindy, Love your blog. Thanks for the useful information. We have been here at StolenFlowersFarm for 16 months now, and it is an ongoing process, what with amending soil, building a greenhouse and erecting high tunnels. We are primarily cut flower growers but we grow fruits and vegetables as well as raise rabbits and chickens for personal use. Thanks for sharing. Dan
Dan, it’s always good to hear from someone who finds my information useful.
Do you have a problem with voles eating your root veggies? Voles ate my parsnips, which I left in the ground for the winter.
Mary, I mention voles in this post and also in the version I wrote for Mother Earth News at http://www.motherearthnews.com/permaculture/winter-carrots.aspx. I talk about voles and potatoes at https://homeplaceearth.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/potatoes-and-voles/
I agree, Cindy, fall and winter carrots are the best! My problem is finding the space to plant them early enough. I planted some at the end of July, some in mid-August, and some September 2. The earlier ones did better. I’ve still got a bunch in a cold frame that are just holding. It’s fun to pull them in January.
I love your idea of making rye rows and planting the carrot seed in the stubble. I will definitely try to work that into my rotation.
Cindy,
I followed your advice and planted carrots yesterday in my 4′ wide bed. I planted 7 rows lengthwise. How many do you plant? I’m just trying to figure out the spacing because I’ve looked at several sources and all have different numbers. Thanks!
I put 7 rows in my 4′ wide bed. With all the rain we’re having, they should be up in no time. Just watch for weeds at first, then you will be on your way to winter carrots. Yeah!
Hi CIndy,
This post is exactly what I was looking for, thanks. I really like the idea of the rye for an alternate crop. Two questions: 1) Do you need to rotate beds for any reason? 2) Your statement, “Just watch for weeds at first…” is a huge understatement for me. I have a terrible time growing carrots due to weedsweedsweeds and even more problems with parsnips as they seem to take longer to germinate. Does the rye help keep the weeds back? Does anything?
Thanks!
All the crops get rotated from one bed to the next in my rotation. Everything will have something preceding it. I’ve found that the timing for rye fits well with winter carrots. The trick to not having weeds is not letting weed plants go to seed. If you leave things go in the fall and don’t plant a cover crop for winter, it is likely that some weeds will have gone to seed, naturally planting themselves for the next year. If you know you have excessive weed pressure, maybe you could cut the rye and let the first weeds germinate. Take them out and plant carrots.
[…] When the first hard frost comes in the fall, everything changes in the garden. The pepper plants that were so lush the day before are now wilted, along with so many other warm weather crops. That doesn’t mean your garden is finished for the season, however. This is the time for the cold weather crops to take center stage. I look forward to the frost bringing out the sweetness in the carrots and greens. In fact, I don’t worry about growing carrots to harvest in the summer anymore because we are so spoiled with the ones we have in the cold months. For the next six months we will have sweet carrots fresh from the garden. I’ve previously written about how I grow my winter carrots. […]
I’m curious as to why you buy in carrot seeds rather than save them. Saving them closes the production/consumption circle.
Mike, you’re right about saving your own seeds closing the circle. I save a lot of my own seeds. You have to be on the ball to save carrot seeds, since they produce seed the second year. Growing them through the winter is the first step, so I’m halfway there. Something often comes up to take my attention from nursing my carrots to the seed stage. This year it was a cold wet spring and throwing all my attention to completing my upcoming book. Buying the seeds I need from sources close to home connects me to my local/regional community, which also needs to be tended to so that it can be resilient as we go forward into changing times.
Yep, all the biennials like carrots, parsnips, turnip, beets involve a bit of finesse. I agree with your comments about connecting with seed sources close to home but I think that saving your own trumps that in one critical aspect. As with any skill, you have to learn the tricks. In our zone, we can’t leave our root vegetables in the grown because it freezes like a rock. Deep mulching is a non-starter unless we want to wade through snow and even then there are no guarantees that the mulch hasn’t become home to critters who will dine on the sweet vegetable treats. So we root cellar them in Rubbermaid tubs filled with children’s play sand. We have one tub that is solely for seed so that we don’t inadvertently eat next year’s seed. The experience gained is invaluable. Carrots cross with Queen Anne’s Lace which is all around us. At first we bagged the carrot flower heads but then we decided not to in order to see just how much crossing occurred and what it was like. Is it possible to identify the crosses and rogue them out? We don’t know yet because we haven’t dug our carrots yet this year. If we find a lot of crosses, we will have to increase the space that we allocate to carrots. Since we grow intensively in raised beds that may not be a problem but it will be a factor in our overall space allocation. This year our seed beets did not bolt and flower so we have no seed from them but we do have seed left from last year. We always keep seed in reserve so we’ll get to see how viable two year old beet seed is.
Another reason for saving biennial root vegetable seed as well as other vegetable seeds is that they start to adapt to your soil and micro-climate conditions. We always leave a couple of plants in the ground just to see if they will overwinter. So far only the parsnips have and we continue to harvest seed from them. We’re selecting for in ground storage.
Regards,
Mike
[…] January 2013 I wrote about what I do to have winter carrots. I begin in the fall of the previous year and plant rye in rows in my future carrot bed. The rye […]