A friend emailed to tell me about her carrots the other day, and I just couldn't resist sharing this with you. She had heard that carrots are biennial (meaning, they can remain in the garden until the next year, rather than having to be harvested before the winter comes), so she decided to experiment and leave some in her garden.
Here are the carrots her son picked last week:
I saw a picture of her 5 year old son holding it- that big carrot is about as thick as his arm, and just look at it in comparison to those bananas! They had it for dinner, and she emailed to let me know that it tasted just fine- not bitter at all!
What a great experiment! Guess what I'll be planting extra of to leave in my garden next fall?
Has anyone else tried this? Do you know of any other vegetables that this works with?
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I can’t believe how big that carrot is!
Penny
http://tupelodeals.blogspot.com
I can’t wait to try growing huge carrots like that!
Onions are also biennial, so something like this might work for them too (I’m pretty sure my in-laws have done is successfully with onions). Don’t eat them on the “off” year though, wait until the “in season” year again — I know from experience that they AREN’T sweet when you harvest them after they’ve tried to bloom!
Here in Guatemala they grow carrots that big. When we first saw them, we thought they would be bitter, but they are actually sweet and delicious!
Hi Bevy,
I’m excited for you to try out some gardening- I think you’ll love it, as I have learned to! And yes, we’re part of Sovereign Grace, the only Canadian church! Nice to meet another SG’er! :)
Wow!! those carrots sure look yummy.
I just want to say I’ve really been enjoying your blog…I’m fairly new to the blog world… and it’s neat to “learn so much” from fellow blogee’s. Particulary the information you’ve given regarding gardening, etc. I’m anxious to try my hand at it, sometime soon, and hopefully implement alot of your good info. I also think we’re from the same church group (I think because of comments made regarding music and reading material) – are you part of SGM (formally known as PDI)?
If so, I think that’s pretty neat – stumbling upon your blog and feeling a kinship of sorts.
Congrats on your pregnancy. Hope all goes well.
My climate is much, much colder than yours, most days in December and January and February are around -15 to -20 celcius, but can be much colder (we have many around -30 C). We have snow from late October through to April or even much later some years.
I harvested my carrots the last week of October and some of them were ruined from the ground being frozen. In fact, some I couldn’t pull up because the ground was too frozen. Some of the carrots had split a lot and become sort of “pithy” on the ones that had gotten frozen, and then the appeared to be wilty when I brought them inside and they thawed out a bit. The majority of my crop was still okay though.
However, I have relatives who live a bit more south who have by accident left carrots in the ground, and they were fine. A friend at church said you don’t need to pull them up, but another friend at church said they didn’t one year and they lost the whole crop! So I don’t know what to think, honestly…but I am going to personally continue to harvest my carrots before a hard frost (this year I was late) and store them in my fridge in bags with holes in them. I also blanched and froze a bunch of other ones.
Sorry for the confusing info on what happens around here but I want to be safe with my own carrots. If I lived somewhere warmer I would be more willing to experiment. :)
This is seriously one huge carrot! I don’t know if those sorts of carrots can grow in Australia – and I have never heard of that sort of carrot before either. I will definately have to look into that further.
Wow! That is all I can say about that carrot!
Sarah, she and I both live in the Vancouver, BC area (about 3 hours north of Seattle). We’ve had a fairly cold winter, with several feet of snow and lots of days below freezing, though I’m sure we are much more moderate in temperature than Montana, since we’re pretty close to the coast.
Has anyone tried this in a really cold winter climate?
Where does your friend live? How cold are the winters?
Our ground has been frozen solid for some time (we live in Western Montana), but I’d like to try this, along with some other root vegetables (turnips?). Its gotta work, but I was wondering if anyone had any tips.
Thanks.
Hahaha. I do this with my garden and I got about 10 lbs worth of amazing carrots! I usually do a gourmet mix so that I end up with orange, white, yellow, and purple carrots too…they do wonderfully during winter in our garden-even with all the snow that we had!
That carrot is huge!!! Such good information to have, too, as we will be planting our first garden this year. We did grow some carrots last year in a container, and, well… I’ve just got to show them off!
http://boysrulemylife.blogspot.com/2008/06/whats-up-doc.html
Thanks again for sharing the carrot info! I’m enjoying your blog!!!