Carrot Help

So I planted carrots sometime around mid- to late-May. About how long do these take to mature (sorry, do know the exact 'breed')? I've attach pictures below for reference as to what they look like. They look like they are ready to be harvested, but I really don't have a clue.

I threw together a garden VERY quickly after getting the yard in order (its our first year in our new house). It's small and needs a lot of work. I figured anything it produced would be a bonus this year. We've got some cherry tomatoes, corn, carrots and a slew of string beans. I'm now hooked on gardening and growing my own veggies. I'm just seeing this year out and then I'm going to build a bigger bed and make it raised with stone walls for next year (a fall project). Even my wife, who laughed a little at me when I started this, is hooked as she loved having fresh string beans with her dinner last night (our first veggie from our garden).

Anyway, back to the carrots - any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

They usually 2 - 3 months to get full size. You can pull them anytime they are large enough to eat. Most of use leave them 1-2 inches apart and then thin out baby carrots and use those while waiting for the rest to grow a little larger. It does depend a great deal on the cultivar tho.

Hi, ddelaiarro. I'm certainly not the expert Farmerdill is. He (or she?) is an absolute wealth of gardening info! However, I can tell you that we planted our carrots (not sure what cultivar either) around the first of May and just began harvesting this week. We used the "trial and error" method of figuring out when to harvest. In other words, we sacrificed several over the past few weeks, pulling them up to see if they were ready! Another way to check, but not always a very accurate way, is to use your finger to remove some of the dirt around the top of the carrot to allow you to see how big it's getting. Sometimes that can be deceiving, though! It's nice to have fresh from the garden veggies, isn't it? This is our first year with a large garden and it's been wonderful BUT tons and tons of work. The carrots are good but are very aromatic with a strong flavor. The kids won't eat them as well as they eat their baby carrots from the store, but I think they'll be wonderful cooked! Let us know how it goes.

Oh...one more question for Farmerdill, if you're watching this thread (or anyone else!). Do the carrots typically get tougher and more fibrous in the middle the bigger they get? I think ours could grow a little bigger if we let them, but I don't want them to get too tough. Thanks!

This message was edited Jul 19, 2007 12:52 PM

Some of the old cultivars do, especailly in the summer. The newer cultivars will usually hold through the fall and in this area winter getiing better all the time.

easter_lily

Is it the baby carrots in the plastic store packages your kids like? If so, tell them those started out as full-size carrots and were just ground down to that size. Yep, saw it on TV. I think it was on Discovery. I couldn't believe my eyes - what a waste. Sheesh!

Actually it was a process developed to avoid waste. They use the culls that are not perfect enuff for cello packs. Cut them into sections and mill the sections to perfect "baby" carrots

Ah, well, that's acceptable then. That wasn't made clear in the TV program. Thanks, Farmerdill.

I personally don't care for the baby carrots in the cello packs. To me, they taste plastic, not like real carrots. But that's an opinion not shared by my children and grandchildren.

Karen

Very interesting! I learn something new every time I come to this forum. It is the "baby" carrots that they love the most, but they'll also eat full-size carrots peeled and cut into sticks. The varieties we buy in the store are so much sweeter than the ones we've grown in our garden. Our garden carrots taste a lot more like the soil they grew in! Not sure if it's just a difference in variety or the fact that my tastebuds are so spoiled that they can't recognize a "real" carrot when they taste one!!! :)

There are differences among the cultivars, so you might try a different one that better suits your taste and or soil conditions. Those baby carrots are carved from long slender Imperator types. Most cultivars of this type are very tender, but some folks consider them bland.

Thanks for the help folks! We pulled one up yesterday and it wasn't quite ready. Very long and slender. Unfortunately, I don't know the cultivar (I threw out the seed package after I planted - I'm learning the hard way here ;) ). I think it'll just be a matter of trial and error :)

Don't carrots get long and slender if they aren't watered enough? The roots have to go deeper to get the water? I haven't been watering my very well lately, I hope they turn out ok. Also, maybe how much water they get would effect their taste? Don't know. I do know that the other year I tried carrots, I gave up on them and left them in the ground...the next spring they were still there growing.....don't know how big they were or if they tasted ok, didn't realize they were still going strong until they got tilled up. I have read that if you put a layer of mulch over them late fall, you can run out in the winter and dig them up and still eat them. I think you can do it with turnips and other things as well....

Kristie

I tried that last fall with carrots, up a zone to the north from you, but they didn't survive.

Otoh, the scallions not only survived, they burgeoned!

Territorial has a carrot, Merida, meant to be sown in late fall to overwinter and harvest the next year. Alas, they seem to be sold out.

http://www.territorial-seed.com/stores/1/Merida_-_Overwintering_P671C52.cfm