Both are basically small greenhouses, and using them is the equivalent of moving your garden one growing zone south. Cold frames and mini hoop tunnels are great ways to offer crop protection. The next step is to protect your crop during winter, when severe freezes, snow, and ice threaten to destroy it. But don’t harvest just yet! Cold temperatures will sweeten your carrots by converting their starches into sugar, so allow a few light frosts to affect your crop before you taste any roots. If you’ve been a decent carrot steward, you’ll have a good-looking crop by the time of your first average frost date. Row cover is a great way to keep them away from the buffet. Plus, tender seedlings are attractive to the rabbits and the huge grasshoppers that proliferate in my summer garden. I also like to suspend fabric row cover over the seedlings as a shade cloth, offering them some relief from the relentless sun while allowing air and rain to penetrate. Mulch will help with moisture retention, and if you water late in the day, the moisture will soak into the soil rather than evaporate. Keep your late-summer carrots well-watered so they’ll thrive despite the heat. (See “ Growing Great Carrots” below for more advice.) Thin the seedlings when they’re about 2 inches high.
As soon as you see a fine crop emerging, remove the cover the seedlings need light as much as they need moisture once they’re aboveground. Look for seedlings underneath the cover every day, too. Whatever material you choose, check on your seedbed a couple of times each day to make sure the cover is moist. I like to use fabric row cover because it keeps the soil surface moist while letting sunlight penetrate. The trick is to keep the seeds consistently moist for the first few days, by covering them with wet burlap or cardboard.
Most carrots take 50 to 70 days to mature, so you can use that as a rule of thumb if you have seeds of unknown cultivars you’d like to grow.Īt this point, readers who garden in places with long, hot summers are thinking “I can’t get carrots to germinate in August!” Actually, you can. By comparison, small ‘Paris Market’ carrots take only 55 days to mature, so their planting date for a winter crop would fall nearer the end of August. Counting back from October 20, I discover that I should plant this cultivar in my garden around the first of August. For example, the average first frost date in my area is October 20, and heirloom ‘Danvers 126’ carrots need 75 days of growth before harvest. (Plants don’t germinate or grow well in cold, low-light conditions, so your carrots will have to do most of their growing before frigid temperatures set in.) Check the seed packet for the days to maturity, and then count backward from the first frost date in your area.
To find the planting date for a winter crop of carrots, you’ll have to count backward from the first frost date in your area. With a little advance planning, you too can eat fresh, homegrown carrots every December - and beyond. Growing carrots for your winter table doesn’t require expensive equipment or much gardening experience. Take my word for it: Winter carrots taste better than carrots grown in spring or summer. At the carrot bed, I pull back the fabric row cover and fork up a bunch of sweet, tender roots from the chill soil. On the shortest day of every year, I like to bundle up and head out to the garden with a spading fork.
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