06/14/2026
It was carrot harvest day yesterday! Finally 😅
I chaos sowed 15 feet each (500 seeds per variety) on March 3rd.
I had phenomenal germination for the rainbow blend, of each color too. I think it was too crowded, even after I tried to thin them out a bit.Berlin orange carrot had spottier germination, maybe 50%? but size was excellent!
Harvest of rainbow blend yielded 14.2 # of “keepers” that will be stored using a new “damp sand” method that I saw a fellow gardener use (see further details below).
Harvest of Berlin yielded 7.2 # of keepers to store. These were HUGE!
I weighed all the stubbies together, the ones that are not fully developed, or only as long as your finger but are shaped like an octopus etc. They’ll be washed and cooked up soon, my son LOVES carrots!
The damp sand method is using a general purpose sand, kept damp in a cool dark place, to store the carrots for roughly 6 months. This method seems to mimic overwintering conditions, with a more steady temperature because it’s in the basement, so the roots stay crunchy and hydrated. The info I saw said to lay flat, not touching, and keep ~1 inch of stem on the root to keep the root from drying out. We did a good 2” or so between layers, and I dampened the sand after we patted it flat. Sand is heavy…WET sand though 😬 Immovable.
The enemy here is both too dry, but too wet too. Too dry, they’ll shrivel. Too wet, they’ll rot.
To be frank, if this were a fall crop of carrots, I would leave them in the ground as they were. The fact that it’s a spring crop makes harvesting and properly storing necessary. Carrots can get too hot and bolt, if it’s too wet they can also swell and crack (I had ~2-3 do that), or they can start to rot and get eaten by pests.
I’m excited to see how this method does! It was only about $6 in seeds, so if nothing works, it’s not that bad. It would suck, but wouldn’t be a devastating blow.
