How to know when to harvest carrots and store them?

How to know when to harvest carrots and store them
How to know when to harvest carrots and store them

Recommend you to read “How to grow carrots and increase the yield

Carrots are easy to grow in a garden with deep, loose soil; as you might guess from the name, they contain beta-carotene.

Half a cup of carrots provides you with four times the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) of vitamin A in the form of beta-carotene.

Grow this nutrient-rich crop almost year-round in mild climates by growing a continuous crop and using a heavy mulch to protect carrots from winter temperatures.

If you have hard or heavy soils, plant short varieties to get the most out of your carrot harvest time.

Harvest time of carrots has a big impact on carrot quality. One is storage quality and the other is nutritional quality.

What are the disadvantages of harvesting carrots too early? How many days can you harvest the best carrots? How to know when to harvest carrots? This article explains for your friends.


DETERMINING WHEN TO HARVEST

Knowing how to tell when your carrots are ready to harvest is important for a good crop.

First, check your seed packet to see how many days it will take for the various carrots you have selected to mature.

Small carrots are usually ready to harvest 50 to 60 days from the planting date. Mature carrots take a few weeks to mature and are usually ready in about 75 days.

Most carrots are ready for harvest when the shoulders are 1/2 to 3/4 inch in diameter, but again, there are many variations depending on the variety.

TIPS

Timely harvesting is very important for storing carrots. Carrots, like radishes, do not have a dormant period for fleshy roots.
If harvested too early, the fleshy roots can easily sprout or deteriorate due to soil temperatures and high temperatures that cannot be stored in the cellar in time, or if the temperature of the vegetable pile does not drop quickly after the cellar.
If harvested too late, the fleshy roots may freeze in the field, and the frozen fleshy roots will rot much and burn after death.


HOW TO HARVEST CARROTS

Now that you know when to pick carrots, you will want to know the best process for how to pick carrots from your garden.

According to measurements, the carotenoid content of carrot fleshy roots forms faster after 50 days of sowing and peaks after 90 days of sowing.

Meanwhile, as the fleshy roots of carrots mature, glucose is gradually converted to sucrose, crude fiber, and starch gradually decrease, nutritional value increases, quality becomes softer, and sweetness increases.

At the same time, the fleshy roots of carrots increase in size, and the weight of a single root increases. However, when the fiber content reaches a certain limit, the crude fiber content increases and the quality decreases. Therefore, it must be harvested in time.

Grabbing the leaves and giving it a pull usually results in a small number of leaves without carrots. It is helpful to loosen the soil with a garden fork before harvesting carrots.

Cut 1/4 to 1/2 inch of the green top from the top of the carrot and rinse and dry the roots before storing.

When deciding when to pick carrots, consider how many you can use over a two- to four-week period. Carrots can be left in the ground for another four weeks, or even longer in the winter.

Make sure you harvest the last batch of carrots before the ground freezes solid.


MATURE CHARACTERISTICS

Most varieties, when the fleshy roots reach harvest maturity, generally show yellow-green heart leaves, slightly yellowed outer leaves, cracks in the ground due to the expansion of the fleshy roots, and some root heads slightly exposed on the soil surface.

Generally, the carrots sown from late July to early August will be harvested in late October, and in the south, the harvest can continue until February of the following year.

After spring, the weather turns warm, the top buds sprout, the bearded roots increase, the sweetness decreases and the quality deteriorates, so it must be harvested in full.


HOW TO STORE

When the time comes to harvest carrots, remember the storage plan.

Store clean carrots by placing the green tops in a vegetable bin in the refrigerator for two to four weeks.

They will sit in a cool cellar in a bucket of sand for several months. Do not store carrots near apples or pears.

The gases produced by these fruits can cause carrots to turn bitter. Carrots can also be canned, frozen, or pickled for long-term storage.


PRECAUTIONS

If growers harvest too early, the fleshy roots of carrots may easily sprout or deteriorate if they cannot be stored in the cellar in time due to high soil temperature and temperature, or if they cannot make the temperature of the vegetable pile drop rapidly after harvesting.

If the harvest is too late, especially for autumn carrots, the fleshy roots may be frozen in the field, and the frozen fleshy roots will rot a lot after storage.

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