Pulling Up Carrots

With spring weather upon us and spring planting already underway, it becomes imperative to begin harvesting some of the winter crops in order to make room for beans, corn, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, okra, etc.  That would include harvesting three rows of carrots.  I had already harvested some carrots here and there, but Saturday was a beautiful day for pulling the rest of the carrots out of the ground.

Of the three rows of carrots, one of the rows were Atomic Red variety, another was Cosmic Purple variety, and the final a normal orange Berlicum Carrot.  Our carrot crop was the worst crop we've had in 3 or 4 years in terms of yield and of quality. The size was just not like in previous years.  I blame that on a couple of things. First we had 9 inches more rainfall than in average years.  It was very wet and I planted all the carrots in the lowest part of the garden, so the soil stayed too wet resulting in stunted carrots that didn't really grow well.  Don't get me wrong, we will eat them all - even the baby ones.  Homegrown carrots are so sweet.  Seriously. They don't compare to store-bought.  It's like a whole different product.  

Let's go to work.  What I do is I use a shovel to loosen the soil around the carrots and then I pull them up by the carrot tops. 

A couple of nice carrots in the process of being pulled up

I have a bucket of rainwater handy and I wash the fresh-pulled carrots removing the topsoil.  Later I'll pour the topsoil-laden water on top of my young potato crop that needs a good watering.  That way the topsoil will stay in the garden versus being washed down the drain.

Cleaning the carrots

The photos don't really do them justice, but these are Atomic Red carrots.  They are the prettiest, in my opinion, because they have a reddish tinge and are sort of translucent. 

Atomic Red Carrots in rainwater

Here are the Atomic Red carrots after washing.  Yes, the cows were more than happy to take the greens off my hands.  All the cows, the goat and even the chickens made quick work of the carrot tops that I tossed over the fence.

These are the Cosmic Purple carrots.  Now, these are a little deceiving because they are not purple through and through.  It is just their skins that are purple.  The center is orange like a normal carrot. Still they are interesting looking.  All three varieties taste the same to me - outstanding.

Cosmic Purple Carrots

After the initial cleaning in the rainwater buckets, I laid out the harvested carrots on our picnic table bench and our garden wagon.  Then I sprayed them off with a water hose to get any remaining dirt off of the carrots.  Once they're dry I'll bring them inside and we'll begin eating them and processing them using several different methods.

The second carrot bath

In what ended up being a visual feast, I gathered a colander full of different varieties and sizes of freshly picked carrots.  I like this picture.

A colorful colander

With the warmer weather, our lettuce is going to start bolting, so we've been eating lots of salads with fresh sliced carrots.  We'll blanch and freeze some and we'll also show you another neat way we preserve our delicious carrots a little later this week.