Storing Carrots/Crock Pot

A friend mentioned that his father use to store carrots in a crock pot. He placed this crock in a root cellar (40-50 F), and they lasted all winter. I didn't have a chance to ask him any further questions, so I thought I would toss this idea out for comment.

I have an unheated attached garage which maintains around the same temperature as a root cellar in the winter months. I have several 10 gallon crocks, and there are enough carrots left unharvested to completely fill these two crocks. I figured I would stack the carrots, unwashed, with tops attached, inside these crocks. The wife however, disagreed with the stacking method. She figured they would probably rot before they were used up.

I searched for carrot storage/crock pot on the net and in DG, but found nothing which relates to this method of storage.

Just my opinion, but if your garage stays cold enough, I wouldn't think they would rot. HEAT would make them rot...Push comes to shove, I'd go for it...

I live in the South, with NO HOPE of a root cellar. After I harvested my precious FULL GROWN, BULB onions, I had no choice but to store them in my garage that, at the peak of this summer, certainly reached 103 degrees for many, many days. I had loose-stacked them in a large, clear plastic bowl that I drilled holes all around for air circulation, put them up on top of the clothes dryer, and prayed.

They're fine.

Linda

This message was edited Oct 25, 2011 11:52 AM

mraider3 - I have never tried storing carrots, but I would think it would be best to remove the tops. I also think slightly damp sand and a cool spot for storage would be best. Just guessing...

Da Bee is right on The old timers stored carrots in sand I dont know for sure but I lean to dry sand.They also cut the green vegatation,

Bzzzzzzzzzz!!!

I store my potatoes and onions on shelves in the garage, using cardboard flats from Costco, which are used to ship fruits and vegetables. These keep well into the winter months. The Walla Walla onions are the shortest of the storage onions and have to be consumed within a couple of months. Most of the onion tops will dry and can be removed. The onions tops which are slowest to dry are eaten first, and when new tops or shoots appear they too have to be consumed immediately or they will rot. Managing about 10 flats of each requires regular checking to remove any undesirables. Something which bothers me about storing carrots in sand is how you would know if one had gone bad, and if that would affect the rest of the stored carrots. I will just have to try this and see how it works.

The technique I think I will use is to remove the tops, and stack as many carrots as I can upside down in the bottom of the crock. Cover the carrots with sand, then do a second layer with the same technique.

Builders sand which can be purchased from most hardware stores is fairly inexpensive. I would presume this would be acceptable for storing carrots as long as the carrots were rinsed thoroughly. I recall when making a sandbox for my granddaughter a couple of years ago that there was an issue with the type of sand which should be used. My daughter-in-law came up with an article from the net on 'sand safety'. The recommended sand to be used was about $50 per 25 pound bag. I don't recall what the issue was with using builders sand in the sand box, but that is what we finally opted for then, and what I will use for the carrots.

Damp vs Dry Sand??? I have two crocks....could try both methods.

mraider3 - I grow Candy onions which are not good keepers. I chop up most of the harvest, freeze them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, and quickly transfer them to baggies.

If you weigh the onions before freezing, you can guesstimate how much to use in your recipes. The resulting onions are kinda watery, but the taste is the same - and of course, you can't beat having your own onions on your plate in the middle of winter.

Check out this Idaho man... I've spent several hours looking through his site about both winter gardening and winter storage of various veggies.
http://subsistencepatternfoodgarden.blogspot.com/2010/10/harvesting-beets-and-carrots.html

darius - what a wonderful link! Thank you for sharing it. I think I'll be spending a few hours visiting this site, too.

Yes, that link is AWESOME! Must grow a lot more carrots and sweet onions next year!

WOW - that's fab. I overwinter my peppers, so I really enjoyed that article.

Never thought about bringing my peppers in, but they did so well this year that I think I'll give them a well-earned rest! Looks like you would have to plan ahead to do this, anyway.

The debate has been going on for several days now...."Not in my good crock pot"...So we started kicking back and forth some ideas like using five gallon plastic buckets, bushel baskets, and so forth for storing carrots. We could not agree on any of these ideas. I just now did a quick scan of Idaho man blog which darius posted, and there you have it. We have a dozen or more of these plastic tubs with lids which were used to transport all sorts of things to the kids, but have completely over looked the idea of using them for the veggies. duh! You can slap me up the side of the head on that one darius. I had been using the cardboard flats from Costco to transport potatoes and onions, staking the flats three deep inside 30 gallon, black plastic trash bags, which is a big pain in the back. The plastic tub idea is much simpler and cheaper than the coolers which we used for everything else, and they could be substituted for coolers for the one or two days it takes us to transport fresh corn which we pick and leave in the husks. We use a roll of duct tape to fasten on the lids, labeling each of the tubs with content and who they are to be delivered to. The back of the pick up is absolutely full when we make the run south and the grandkids can't wait to sample all the different jams and jellies. Leaving the plastic tubs behind, or exchanging them would be easier than trying to retrieve the Coleman coolers which were seldom returned if left behind. Great idea darius!

greenhouse_gal, I must have missed the part in the Idaho man blog about bringing peppers indoors for the winter, but I saved five potted hot pepper plants which are now sitting in my south facing window. I will never plant hot peppers directly in the garden again. There has been some discussion in the pepper section about this subject, but I don't think the idea has really caught one yet.

Why won't you plant hot peppers in the garden again? We always do - just in a different section from the sweets.

DH makes wine, so we have all these lovely plastic flats that are useful for all sorts of things. I have stored sweet potatoes in them in the past. If there are any winemakers in your area you might see if they have extra empty grape flats; usually they have way more than they'll ever need.

Our short cool season gg is limited on just about every hot pepper except the early jalapeno, which I have had some success with outdoors, but nothing like the indoor/outdoor potted hot pepper plants this season. Cayenne peppers are may favorite of the hots, but they are extremely frost sensitive. Using tapla's container media mix ideas, I have come up with several media recipes using local resources including: crushed rock, wood chips and wood chip fines; mixed with some well aged cow &/or horse manure; and my personal favorite, spent vermiculture media (originally peat moss). I add some pealrlite to the mix as well, and top it off with some diatomaceous earth mixed into the surface to help prevent aphids when the plants are brought indoors.

I plant the hot pepper seeds in February or March and have them potted up to 2.5 gallon plastic pots by early May when I can start moving them out into what I can now call the sunken greenhouse, thanks to darius and his thread above. Last frost free day here is after June 15th, and by mid-August we can expect our fall frosts to arrive. Forty degree swings in temperature in spring and fall pretty well keep the hot peppers contained in the sunken 'sunken greenhouse' for all except about a month or two at best. Half a dozen plants saved and brought back indoors later in the fall provide a ready supply of hot peppers for my chili and green bean recipe. A couple of people here in DG have mentioned keeping hot pepper plants for several years, but I figure replacing the plants after a year is probably the best way to assure a constant production.

Apology for the windy response gg, but this is still basically work in progress, and I have tried somewhat unsuccessfully to get some feedback on this idea of the indoor/outdoor hot pepper plants. Not much luck here in DG, but I plan to pursue the idea to see if there are others out there in the ether interested in this idea.

That sounds like a great idea. We don't need to do that because we have a longer growing season, but for you people with a short one it sounds ingenious, although labor-intensive.

I'm not sure how to respond to your comment on labor intensive gg. I like experimenting with new ideas and do spend a good deal of time at that, but from the stand point of cultivating and maintaining a potted pepper plant, I don't feel that I spend much more time than with the garden planting method. Fresh hot peppers seem to add more flavor and heat to a dish than the dried or frozen ones, so that is why I like to keep production going as long as possible. Adding six to eight green cayenne peppers to my mother's southern green dish and no one will touch it but me. Bit selfish on my part I know, but I really enjoy how hot peppers bring out the flavors in foods for me.

I need to make an apology for assuming darius was a he...sorry about that one...didn't even realize it until several of you D-mailed me. My BAD!

Yesterday I picked six 5-gallon buckets of carrots and decided to try using wood chip fines instead of soil or sand to store the carrots in sever 30-gallon plastic tubs. I will start the process later this morning with some reservations. I have not run this by any of you for comment, and I don't have any reason for my decision other than the fact that I have an ample supply of this material and figured it would work as well as sand or soil.

Of note, I started trimming the green tops using a knife which was a bit tedious until I realized the tops would easily snap off. I'm not sure if that is because of the recent freezes or if that is the correct method of trimming the carrots. Simple observation, but thought it was worth a mention in case anyone else might not have made this discovery.

I wish I could grow carrots; root crops have a difficult time in my heavy clay. I started a bunch of cool weather crops including carrots in late August for a winter low hoop-house experiment, but something ate the carrot tops as soon as they got about an inch or two tall. I replanted and I think 2-3 actually survived. If so, they will be my first ever carrots!

Don't the carrots need an inch or so of their tops left on them? I leave an inch of stem on winter squash so they don't dry out so fast.

I planted some carrots and then lost them. I did see some coming up but now they seem to have disappeared in the jungle that is the fall garden. I have a hard time getting them to germinate. I have tried planting them in toilet-paper strips that I made myself, planting by the moon, and just plain planting very thickly, but nothing seems to make much difference. And we have very sandy soil.

I can't seem to grow them here, either. I had a little luck growing them at work when I ran the green Garden's Club at the Adult Day Care Program. They grew some wonderful short varieties that put mine to shame. Go figure.

After this thread, though, and those enviable photos posted, I am determined to try again next season!

okay, so in south florida, our 'winter' may just be 'cool' weather for December and most of January, with an occasional 'warning' of 'cold' weather at night (30's as a low temp), so I don't have a cool place to store my harvest.

wouldn't a refrigerator do fine?

I really need to know how to store my stuff and not have it rot or get eaten by ants....

interesting conundrum we have, eh?

Yep, a conundrum. When my grandparents moved their family from Idaho to Miami, it brought a world of change in how they gardened and preserved foods. My grandfather had been a county ag agent out west, so growing in the muck was a real challenge.

Well no one is buying into my idea here on using the left over wood chip fines for storing carrots. Wife and her sister vetoed me again saying wood chips will alter the flavor of the carrots, and their daddy owned a lumber mill, so they know best. Dirt it is.

Daruis, my soil originally was noting more than rock dust with about 900 tons of rock which I removed. I ended up with a rock wall 200 feet long, by six foot deep, and ten feet wide at the end of my yard in the highway barrow ditch. I brought in so much horse manure to augment the remaining two feet of rock dust that I failed my first garden analysis. It came back stating I was way over the limits on P, K & N. So, I purchased a pull behind rototiller for my 26 hp tractor/mower and went to work. I tilled that garden until not a single biscuit could be found!

When I finally got around to planting carrots in the garden last year with one of those fancy seeders, I got an excellent crop. This season we picked about ten five gallon buckets from a single 60 ft row. Now I must admit I truly like carrot cake...but.......

Previous attempts at growing carrots in one of my raised beds was ugly. I think the thing about the garden which seems to work well for the carrots is the soaker hose used to water the row. The carrots get watered daily and thoroughly. The soil for the carrots along with the parsnips planted next to them was not allowed to dry out, and our soil will dry quickly if we are not careful. I do get some of the larger carrots which have split, possibly from too much water, but since we don't bother to thin the row, most of the carrots are uniform and similar in size.

That's really terrific mr3. Very motivational. If you can do all of that, surely I can do SOMETHING to make this happen!

I'd give an arm and a leg for a truckload of that glacial rock dust!

I add rock dust to my garden for the minerals, generally using greensand or sometimes azomite... but glacial rock dust is the best, and not available around here. No wonder you grew great carrots (although the other amendments surely helped!). I've seen some incredible photos of carrots grown in glacial rock dust in Scotland... that's what started my interest in using rock dust.
http://prorev.com/dust.htm
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/727/

greenhouse_gal - The only way I have found to grow carrots is to not let the seeds and seedlings dry out.

>sprinkle the seeds on top of well-raked ground
>tap the ground with the back of a rake
>cover the area with a row cover, and using a "rose head sprinkler" keep the area damp until the seeds have sprouted an the plants are well established.

After that you can remove the row cover and water as usual.

That's probably the trick, Honeybee. I never do seem able to keep them wet enough....

greenhouse_gal - it took me many moons to figure out what I was doing wrong. Then when I had it all figured out, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble of watering the carrot bed several times a day. Sooooo - I now buy organic carrots at the supermarket!

HBNC - will the carrots split if they don't get enough water, or is splitting a factor in too much water? I grew mine last spring/summer, and almost all the ones were split, and I didn't even have the courage to eat them because they looked hinky.

but I got some chantenay's in the DG Newbie seeds, so looking forward to some short, sweet, stumpy carrots.....

HoneyBee, I too buy organic carrots at the supermarket. They're amazingly cheap. I just thought it would be fun to experiment with different types but alas!

The funky carrots in the pic make up approximately ten percent of the carrots picked from a 60 ft row. We had about five gallons of these, plus some spit carrots, and some which were cut accidently. We processed those early this morning and came up with a gallon of juice and the remaining pulp will become worm food.

I would presume that the close planting without thinning is responsible for the 'mutant' carrots, but it doesn't take away from their usefulness. Besides it is easy to harvest carrots when so closely planted. I started with a shovel, but quickly found out all I had to do was grip a handful, pull, then shake off the loose dirt. Snapping the green tops was easy, possibly because I left them in the ground until after a few hard frosts and a couple of 20 degree nights. It even surprised me how quickly the harvesting process went. I have two large tubs of carrots submerged in garden soil sitting in my insulated, but unheated, attached garage which should last all winter. And, one full five gallon bucket for the food bank.

Thanks all for the input.

morgan

Builders sand is much coarser sand with sharper edges. That's what you want for mixing into concrete, as it will "stick" better with the cement and make a stronger combination when it sets. It's far too coarse for sandboxes, many times more likely to cause abrasions to skin and eyes than the finer stuff. In my younger days I used to play a lot of volleyball on sand courts. These were supposedly set up to mimic the conditions of natural beaches where the sport originated, but as often as not the people who made them were ignorant of the differences in sand quality and opted for the much cheaper and readily-available builders sand. The result was a lot of blood on the court, something rarely encountered on the beach.

As to which sand to use for storage, I would lean towards the builders sand unless you have a quantity of finer sand available free. The more open arrangement of the coarser grains will support the vegetables while permitting more movement of oxygen to minimize the anaerobic conditions that favor rot. And it should be easier to remove from the produce than the finer grades of sand, which would tend to work themselves into the pores and tiny cracks in the surfaces of roots.

-Rich

Gotch Rich...however, the wife made the call and used garden soil instead.

I believe the reason sand or sawdust is used is that it can be kept quite damp and still not exclude air from the root surfaces - critical for long-term root storage.

It wouldn't work down here unless you could find a deep hole that was still above the water table without drilling through limerock - a hard match. It rarely stays cold enough long enough near ground level, and the roots just start growing.

-Rich

SoFlaCommercial - I don't remember having a problem with carrots splitting. I would think inconsistant watering would be the culprit - like tomatoes - if they aren't watered for awhile, and then get drenched the skins will split.

Do you have grey sand or black muck where you garden? Ours was grey sand where we lived - we laughed at calling it "dirt". We could grow Danvers Half-Long carrots in that stuff, they just kept on going deeper and deeper.

yep, grey sand. I actually purchase 'potting soil' by the yard from a local nursery for my raised beds. When I first built the beds, we filled them with three yards of 'compost' from the county landfill.

I don't know why the carrots split, then - we had the garden on an irrigation system and watered twice a day for about 10 minutes each time.

I have some Danvers seeds as well as Chantenay's. I figured the Chantenay's would be stumpy, eh?

I plan (someday) to go out to the everglades and get some muck - I hear it makes for some good fertilizer to mix into the bed. Has that been your experience?

SoFlaCommercial - my (limited) experience with black muck was that it gets as hard as rock when completely dry! I had a dump truck load of aged horse manure delivered every August - we had very happy earthworms :)

There are a number of stables in the Wellington area, maybe you could find a source of horse manure from one -- or from the Polo grounds.

never used black muck before - so thanks for that tip. figured that if I ever got muck I'd have to mix it very well with soil.

I've put shout outs to ppl I know who have horses, or know ppl who have horses, and so far no luck. think all the poop's spoken for....