{"id":26356,"date":"2014-04-26T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T14:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/?p=26356"},"modified":"2014-04-11T21:27:49","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T03:27:49","slug":"store-garden-carrots-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyimprovisations.com\/store-garden-carrots-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Store Garden Carrots for the Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"My<\/a>
My friend, LuAnn, with one of the Bolero carrots dug earlier this spring.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Knowing how<\/strong> you are going to be able to store your garden carrots for the winter can be useful for planning how many and what types of carrots to plant. I have a friend who really enjoys her carrots and has experimented with many types of winter storage and carrot varieties. She recently told me about what she considers to be the easiest, least labor intensive way to store them, as well as which kind of carrot she has found to be most reliable over her many years of growing carrots.<\/p>\n

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First, the variety<\/strong>. She definitely likes the Bolero carrot seeds, that she buys from Johnny’s Selected Seeds<\/a><\/span>. They have produced large, flavorful carrots without fail. They are particularly sold as a storage carrot. She also plants a few early carrots, like the Nelson variety, but only enough to eat early in the garden season. In case you are wondering, she eats carrots raw and cooked all the time. She puts them in her husband’s lunches. I was given a sample from some cut up in her refrigerator and they were quite tasty. These were from last year’s planting and the winter storage method I am going to describe to you.<\/p>\n

My friend told me<\/strong> that she has tried just about every idea for storing unprocessed carrots through the winter. As a root crop, there was the potential to store them without drying, freezing, or canning. But they ran into complications. For example, a large bin layered with sand and carrots, collected water in the lower levels and carrots rotted, even with holes down the sides of the bin for aeration. Keeping the carrots moist enough so that they don’t shrivel, but not so moist that they rot proved tricky. They liked the idea of storing the carrots in the ground, but struggled to find a way to cover them enough so that the ground didn’t freeze, but the cover was easy enough to move when it was time to get more carrots. At one point they tried straw bales, when they lived in Colorado and the freezing seemed impossible to prevent, but that meant that digging winter carrots was a major workout.<\/p>\n

Here in Idaho<\/strong>, where it doesn’t freeze quite so deeply (but still gets down to subzero\u00b0 F for a spell)<\/em>, they have finally discovered what they consider to be a cost effective, labor efficient way to insulate the carrots in the ground. All it takes is<\/p>\n