A fine bunch of nice fat carrots! Growing decent carrots has been a bane in my “farming” career. Always spindly with tiny roots. Not this time!
My name is Bluewing and I have done this! (finally)
I found carrots do the best in the loosest soil you can provide. Like potting soil. I did the best carrots this year too when I switched them to a mix of garden and potting soil in a 3 foot tall raised bed.
Yeah, that’s what I did. I switched to raised boxes to save on my knees and back now that I’m old. I topped off my boxes with cheap potting soil this spring. They seemed very happy with my choice.
They’ll love sand, you just gotta make sure to enrich it.
I came here to say sand! Mix it 50/50 with super hot compost and let her rip. I am curious why they’ve harvested carrots so early though, even in Maine we have 2 months of growing left for tubers. Hell I over wintered some carrots last year and they are sweeter than you would believe!
2 months left? I am in west maybe 600 miles or so, and our growing season ends much sooner than that. Last year especially. And we are sheltered by the lakes that moderate the extremes.
Carrots grow right up to a hard frost, them go dormant. I suppose the Maine Coast is technically zone 6a, so take that as you will. I won’t harvest my carrots until Thanksgiving
Those are a real achievement! I’d be quite proud of those myself.
Nice work, mate!
Thanks! The struggle has been real.
What led you to finally succeed?
I got no clue. Other than I made this box a bit lighter with the soil I added last spring to top it off.
I am impressed!
I only managed to get micro-carrots out of my north side garden that is in almost perpetual shadow and have given up by now…That’s been my world of carrots forever. I feel your pain. I had such a poor germination that I have carrots of every size left out there. I might get another half dozen if a hard killing frost holds off for another few weeks. But I don’t hold out hope.
I grew mine in sand soaked in compost juice
Huge fuckin carrots.
I have a weird sand pit in my yard now though.
Hard frost won’t harm them, imo you’re harvesting a month early. Carrots can overwinter in the ground for super easy storage
Yeah, I know that. As I said, I just couldn’t resist pulling these few. There are still plenty of them left in the box still trying to grow. Though I would leave them in the ground over the winter here. It. would take a pickaxe to get them dug up in a few months. We measure ground frost in feet here. Not inches.
Likewise with frost depth, not trying to rain on your parade. Thems some nice carrots you got there
You can over winter the little ones to give them a chance for next year.
Apply straw or mulch to protect them before the frost.
Not when temps hit -30F in raised beds. They will freeze and freeze hard.
Those are some very fat normal-looking carrots, congrats!
Ooo lovely! I’ve always heard carrots were difficult to grow at home, since they need specific soil as to make them look carroty and not evil. Maybe that was childhood silliness.
I’m aiming to grab some of mine out right before the ground freezes over.
You can wait until the ground freezes a little, though there is little reason to do so if you are canning or freezing them anyway.
Yeah but it’s harder to dig.
Well done, mr. Bluewing!
